What started out as a luxurious beach vacation and ended in abject horror when two Detroit women were raped at gunpoint in their five-star hotel. The two friends had spent $2,400 on an all-inclusive getaway at Hotel Riu Reggae in Jamaica, where they stayed for five nights.
At 11:15pm on their last night there, a 24-year-old man named Scott Dowe climbed up onto their balcony and forced his way into their room on the second floor. Dowe had been on the job at the hotel just three nights before, working as a dancer with an entertainment company the hotel had hired.
He demanded money from the women, then threatened to kill them if they each didn’t have sex with him while the other watched. This went on for 15 long minutes before one of the women, who owned a gun back home in Detroit, managed to get a hold of the attacker’s weapon.
“I grabbed the gun and started shooting,” recalled the woman.
There were only two rounds in the gun, and she fired them both, hitting Dowe twice. He fled, jumping off the balcony he’d come in from.
“At night, it really haunts me. All I see is his eyes,” she said in an interview with Detroit Free Press.
After the shooting, the woman left the room, half naked, found the front desk, placed the gun on the counter and said, “There was a gunman in my room. He raped and robbed me and my friend. And I took the gun and I shot him.” The staff member at the front desk then called the police.
Dowe was arrested the following day when he checked himself into a local hospital, and the hospital staff informed authorities that they’d admitted a man with gunshot wounds. Had he not been shot, Dowe would likely still be at large.
“I feel empty, like something is missing,” said the woman. “I just want to know why? What targeted me? Did (he) just see me as an opportunity?”
Things will never be the same for her. However, thanks to her good instincts and some familiarity with firearms, she may have saved two lives that night.