Man Calls 911, Saying Girlfriend Locked Him In Storage Unit for Week; Now He Calls Charges Against Her BS

Robin Deaton, 52, was arrested and is facing charges for the attempted murder and kidnapping charges, according to the Monroe Police Department.

In a 911 call made on February 24 and released by Union County Emergency Services, her boyfriend, Gary Oxendine, claimed he’d been at the facility since Thursday, February 20, without any food or water.

“I’ve been locked in a storage unit for about a week now, and I’ve just now found my phone,” Oxendine can be heard saying in the 911 call. “My girlfriend locked me in here. She doubled locked my lock, and I don’t know how she put me in here but she put me in here.”

Oxendine claimed he was in unit 43, saying when questioned whether he needed emergency services, “I just need [to get] out of here. I just can’t breathe. I haven’t had nothing to drink or anything.”

However, the man has since claimed that he fell asleep in the unit, and his girlfriend didn’t realize and locked the door.

In an attempt to clear the air — and his girlfriend of the charges leveled against her — Oxendine told ABC-affiliated local station WSOC that the charges are reportedly “bogus” and a mistake.

“It’s just a bunch of bogus charges. I mean she shouldn’t be up there charged with attempted murder, attempted kidnapping,” Oxendine told the station.

He claimed Deaton left to get them something to eat, before he fell asleep in the unit. He alleged she didn’t see him and he didn’t hear her when she shouted for him. She then left and locked the door, thinking he’d gone, per the outlet.

“She thought I had gone with an ex-girlfriend. That’s what it all boils down to, and I hadn’t,” Oxendine explained, per the station. “She said she came the next day but I sleep hard and I fell asleep. I had been up working for a couple days.”

In an email to PEOPLE, Monroe Police Department lieutenant and public information officer Morgan Malone said there was “corroborating evidence” against Dean to support the charges.

“The detectives followed the facts of the case with corroborating evidence to support the charges. The charges have been filed and the case has been turned over to the District Attorney’s Office,” Malone wrote. “Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for a domestic violence victim to recant their initial testimony.”

“We believe that she truly intended for him to die in that storage unit with no food and no water, no outside source of anything,” Malone also told FOX 59. “She knew she locked him in there and never went back to check on him.”

Malone told PEOPLE on Feb. 27 that the man said Deaton had allegedly convinced him to crawl to the back of the storage unit to grab something for her, before she slammed it shut and said, “This is what you get.”

The officer said of the case, per CBS-affiliated local station WBTV, “This is bizarre. In 15 years, I’ve not seen anybody who has been locked in a storage unit.”

“The storage unit was described to me as being a hoarder’s paradise,” Malone added, according to the outlet. “As soon as the officers opened up the door, things started falling out. The further they opened it, more stuff fell out.”

According to the outlet, Oxendine was left in complete darkness in the storage unit and struggled to find his phone.

An incident report obtained by the outlet lists the crime as false imprisonment, though, per the outlet, detectives sought higher charges for Deaton’s arrest warrant based on the investigation.

She’s being held without bond, with a hearing set for March 17.

If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages; Calls are confidential and toll-free.