Herbert Davis left his Fayetteville home to get coffee on Monday morning as he usually does. But this time, while he was gone, authorities say a man knocked on Davis' door. When his wife Betty answered, she found a man claiming to be injured.
"She actually opened the door and said, 'Let me call somebody for you,' and he got up and grabbed her," said granddaughter Carly Geanolous.
Authorities say the man then attached a bomb to her ankle and waited.
"The guy had put what he said was a bomb. He showed her a little detonator and said, 'All I have to do is push this button, and it will blow you up," Geanolous said.
The man tied up the 73-year-old woman, Geanolous said, and when Herbert Davis got home, he duct-taped him to a chair.
"He just wanted money, so he held a gun at them and made her go with him to the bank," Geanolous said.
According to Washington County Sheriff Tim Helder, cash was the evident motive.
"If she would extract some money, then they would both be released unharmed," he said.
The man ordered Betty Davis to drive to the Arvest bank as he followed her in their pickup truck. When they got to the bank, she walked inside and told them what was going on, and then stepped out in case the device detonated.
Bank employees called police, but by the time they arrived, the kidnapper was long gone.
"Their whole world has been disrupted by this person, and that's a shame," Helder said.
The bomb squad tested the device and determined it was not really a bomb.
The suspect remains on the loose and is considered armed and dangerous.
