Some quick thinking last week by the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office might have saved a woman’s life.

The woman’s estranged husband - the couple had been separated for more than a year - showed up on March 27, broke open her screen door and gave her three options:

“They could leave together and he would kill them both; she could get back together with him; or her boyfriend can take her place and die,” Detective Olivia Burrus reported in a court affidavit.

“The victim stated she told him they could get back together as she feared he would kill her.”

Nicholas Dean Davis took the woman’s cellphone and did not give it back to her, the detective reported. “She was able to leave the house without it.”

The woman drove to the Cleveland County Courthouse, where she sought and was granted an Emergency Protective Order.

Davis, it turns out, had followed her there.

“While she was there we caught on video the suspect arriving at the courthouse and placing, what we believe to be a tracker, on her vehicle,” Burrus said.

“Upon inspection of her vehicle we did find a tracker underneath her car that he had put there with a magnet for purposes of stalking her.”

Davis was served with a Victim Protective Order, which he violated by trying to contact the woman through other family members, Burrus said.

“On Tuesday, March 28th, the suspect had attempted to make a report saying that the victim was the abuser and because of that, we were able to have him come up to our office, where he was arrested on the charges of stalking, threatening an act of violence, and violation of that VPO,” she said.

Davis was interviewed and confessed to installing the tracker on the woman’s car, according to the affidavit.

Davis, 41, of Newalla, was charged Wednesday in Cleveland County District Court with stalking, kidnapping, and violating a protective order, all felonies. As of late March 30, he remained in the Cleveland County Detention Center.

 - TNS