'They saved me:' Woman recounts incident that ended with fatal police shooting
Citing the ongoing investigation, Gadsden police have released no details about a Jan. 6 incident that resulted in 28-year-old Cody Stewart being shot to death by law enforcement officers.
But Kelsey Freeman is speaking out.
In a Facebook post made Friday, which she gave The Times permission to quote from, she detailed a harrowing, hours-long ordeal, with her ex-boyfriend holding her hostage, at gunpoint, threatening to kill her and himself.
It began, she said, when Stewart hid in her car while she was at work and kidnapped her when she found him there.
It ended, she said, with Stewart trying to shoot her, but she pushed his gun away and officers shot him, allow her to be rescued.
"It's like the thought of that night never stops, it repeats over and over in my head," Freeman said. "How did we go from how we were to where we are now?"
Stewart's family has questions, too. Several family members talked to AL.com reporter Amy Yurkian about the shooting. They question why police couldn't have called on family members — who were nearby — to talk to him, to try to resolve the incident without deadly force.
Stewart's younger sister, Chelsea, recounted watching from about a block away, hearing officers say "Cody, put down the gun," then hearing six shots.
His mother, Jennifer Stewart, told AL.com she warned people that her son had struggled with mental illness, and she offered to jimmy the door of the detached garage where he stayed, and where the standoff occurred.
Police tracked Freeman's cellphone to the location after she was reported kidnapped, Stewart family members said.
A long history
Freeman said she had known Stewart since they were 14 years old. They talked and dated when they were younger, she said, but went their separate ways. "We reconnected around March 2022," she explained.
They started dating, she said, and were together every day.
"I bettered him. I helped him. He helped me," Freeman said. "He (was) a good guy, he was spiritual, he was kind, he was smart, he tried in so many ways to make me happy in the smallest ways, he just had his demons like everyone else.
"He was my best friend, my lover," she said, "and also the one who did this to me and completely changed my life forever.
"I forgive him for everything he did, I told him this the whole entire time during his last minutes," Freeman said. "No matter how bad or what he just did I still loved him and still forgave him."
The rekindled relationship ended in October. Stewart had his demons, Freeman reiterated — anger issues, a "mental abuse thing."
She loved his family, Freeman said, and they loved her. But Stewart struggled.
She tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, "but it just didn’t work out," she said, so they officially broke up.
"He just honestly didn’t take no for an answer," Freeman said.
She had not talked to Stewart for two or three months, had blocked him because he texted her "songs that he thought about killing me," although she said she didn't take it seriously.
Stewart tried taking money from her multiple times, Freeman said, and she tried letting someone in his family know; she felt they "brushed it off."
Freeman said her friends knew that Stewart had been sending her threatening messages; they had one another's locations and they checked on her frequently.
On Jan. 5, she was supposed to pick her mother up from work at 11 p.m. and go to a friend's home. She never made it to the friend's house.
The abduction
Freeman had gotten off work at about 8:50 p.m. and went to a store in Attalla, where she bought gas and a box of wine. She opened the driver's door to her car and let her friend know she was on her way. She said she noticed something "moved weird" in her car, so she walked to the back hatch of the SUV and opened it.
Stewart was hiding in the back of her SUV, she said, and he had a gun. He jumped out, pointed the gun at her head and told her to get in the driver's seat, throwing her into the car. They struggled, him "throwing the car in drive" and her throwing it into park.
"He kept saying 'If you don’t listen to me I will blow your brains out,'" Freeman said. He pushed her to the passenger seat and drove off, she said, with her car in low gear, no headlights on and the hatchback wide open, stuff flying out everywhere, "him screaming and driving crazy."
Stewart drove through the Alabama City/Mill Village area, Freeman said, adding, "He is yelling I’m a whore, how can I just block him? He yelled 'you thought you could just leave me? I would die for you!'”
Freeman said she was begging God to help her as Stewart drove toward woods in Alabama City. She said she asked if he was going to kill her; he told her she'd better pray, then pistol whipped her with the .22, hitting her left eyebrow from which blood poured out.
She said Stewart took her to his house, pulling her car behind his shed, but got stuck in a small ditch so he couldn't hide the vehicle.
Freeman said he zip tied her hands and legs, and pointed the gun at the back of her head, laughing, asking if she was ready to die, telling her if she tried to run or yell he'd shoot her in the head. She said he dragged her by the hair into the shed where he stayed; she'd stayed there, too, when they were together.
The stand-off
In the shed, Freeman said, Stewart tied her to a wheelchair, keeping a gun to her head and saying "crazy things." She said for two months, he'd been planning a murder-suicide. "He was going to kill me and then himself," she said. "Cody struggled with his own demons."
He went through her phone, she said, and he "chokes me out" while she was still tied up.
"I’m trying to fight him, I’m kicking, shaking and I start to drift away and I see a light," Freeman said. "I was praying to my grandmother, (God), my friends, everyone I love, and idk what happened but I broke free and as soon as I did the cops surrounded the building."
She was praying then, she said, thanking God.
Stewart then started saying he was going to kill himself, and Freeman said begged him "please, no." Police tried to negotiate with him, she said, and friends who had her location had come to the site on Hinsdale Avenue and were standing outside.
Freeman said police heard her begging Stewart; that's how they knew she was in the shed. When they'd asked if she was there, she said he wouldn't let her respond, adding, "He had the gun to my mouth the entire time."
Freeman said Stewart tried to shoot himself several times, and in a matter seconds she went from praying "please God help me" to "please God, help him."
As the incident moved toward two hours, she said Stewart told her to lie on the bed in the shed; he lay down beside her, with the gun at her neck.
"Next thing I know, they blow the shed up with a flash (bang) or some kind of bomb," Freeman said. "I can’t see or hear, and he cocks the gun, and he tried to shoot me, but I use all of my strength to move the gun and when I do, they shot him about (four or five) times.
"I look over, as I’m getting grabbed up by the task force, I see him and I break," she said.
"He didn’t deserve it, but I also didn’t deserve what happened to me." Freeman said. "The cops did what they are trained to do in these situations.
"They saved me. Multiple people saved me that night," she said, thanking everyone who helped her.
"This is my story," Freeman said. "This is my testimony. This is going to make me stronger, I have to take it day by day.
"I just don’t understand how we can go from loving each other, being each other's best friends to now," she said. "I not only thought I was going to lose my life, but I also lost someone I truly cared for in the most terrible way all at the same time."
Freeman asks now that people think of her family and Stewart's, and that they be respectful.
And she asks others, if they see signs of abusive behavior in a relationship, to leave. Do not go back.
"If you don’t believe in (God) or a higher power, please know that it is real," she said. "God heard my prayers."
Freeman said her Facebook post is "exactly" what happened, sparing only a few details she felt were inappropriate to post. "It's time for everyone to finally know what really happened," she added.
The two weeks since Jan. 6, she said, had been the hardest of her life.
Freeman said she knows "people are going to pick this story into pieces," but her intention is "to give the full truth." She said she wants to bring awareness to situations like this "because I want to prevent these things from happening to other people."
As for Stewart's family, they want to know what happened. His aunt, Amy Dale, told AL.com she didn't believe her nephew had to die.
And his mother said in the news story, “I just want to know what happened. “Was he pointing the gun at police? Was he pointing it at himself? I don’t know. Even if he just finally snapped and did something wrong, I just want to know."
The Alabama Bureau of Investigation was called in at 1:39 a.m. Jan. 6 to investigate the shooting. The results of their probe will go to the Etowah County District Attorney's office.
This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: Woman regrets man's death, but said police saved her life by shooting
