After nearly two decades, he wanted his freedom, he told police, as he recounted a hellish tale laid out in an arrest warrant that describes a life of “captivity, abuse and starvation.”

A Connecticut man says he set a fire in his room to escape a 2o-year-imprisonment at his stepmother’s house, according to the Waterbury, CT police department in a statement on social media. The man’s stepmother,

A Connecticut man escaped allegedly being held captive by his stepmother for over 20 years after setting fire to his home using household items, according to local authorities.

The man said he was locked in an eight-by-nine-foot room and was fed two sandwiches a day with two cups of water for years, according to a police affidavit in Connecticut.