Newly released bodycam footage shows the reaction of a Connecticut woman as her stepson, who she allegedly kept locked up for more than two decades, is rescued by firefighters.
Kimberly Sullivan, 56, is seen outside her burning house on Feb. 17 calling out for her stepson as a Waterbury firefighter approaches her, urging her to move somewhere safer.
“Come down! We have to get stuff out! Come down,” the woman, who is holding a small dog, is heard shouting in the video shared on local outlet WFSB.
The firefighter asks Sullivan who else is in the house. “My stepson is in here. I’m trying to have him help him out,” she replies, gesturing to someone off screen. “I have two cats … ”
The firefighter asks for clarification: “Everybody’s out?”
She then motions to the front door, responding, “Yes, but he’s right here,” referring to the stepson.
The firefighter once again tells Sullivan to “come down the road” to safety.
“Alright, here he is,” she says about her stepson, adding, “My dog was shaking,” before she is escorted to a spot away from the house.
Sullivan’s stepson is carried out of the house by first responders and taken away in an ambulance as the woman shouts, “Stop! What are you doing?”
The firefighter then tells her, “You need to stay over here.”
Sullivan was arrested last week and charged with assault, kidnapping, unlawful restraint and intentional cruelty to persons, the Waterbury Police Department said in a statement.
She is accused of holding her stepson captive since the age of 11.
The man, now 32, weighed just 68 pounds at the hospital after he was treated for smoke inhalation and exposure to the fire that police say he told them he started as his way to escape.
“Thirty-three years in law enforcement, this is the worst treatment of humanity that I have ever witnessed,” Waterbury Police Chief Fernando Spagnolo said last week after firefighters found the man inside “in a severely emaciated condition.”
Detectives determined he had endured “prolonged abuse, starvation, severe neglect, and inhuman treatment,” police said.
The stepson also claimed his stepmother’s treatment only got worse after his father, Kregg Sullivan, died in 2024.
Sullivan’s lawyer, Ioannis A. Kaloidis, told People magazine that it was his client’s late husband who “was in control” of all decisions regarding his son’s care.
He also claimed that Sullivan never locked her stepson in his room or stopped him from showering.
“My client encouraged him to bathe but she is not going to force a 32-year-old man to take care of himself,” Kaloidis said. “He could have just walked away then if he wanted to leave.”
The lawyer added: “Ultimately it was the father which dictated the manner in which his son was raised and my client was only carrying out his orders.”
Sullivan posted the US$300,000 bail set by a judge in Waterbury Superior Court last week.
She is due back in court on March 26 to answer to the felony charges.