The Wire actor James Ransone is being remembered for heroically springing into action to save a woman from a sexual assault years ago.
Ransone, best known for playing Ziggy Sobotka on the celebrated crime drama, died last week by suicide. He was 46.
Following his tragic and untimely death, a woman by the name of Molly Watts paid her respects on social media.
“I’m usually private but I want to publicly say I am so grateful that this man existed and don’t know if the trajectory of my life would be the same if he hadn’t,” she wrote, alongside a picture of the actor.
Watts explained that they were once neighbors in New York City’s Chinatown — “friendly, overlapping social circles.”
“I was attacked at the threshold of our building. I screamed for help. No one came. My attacker put his hands around my throat so I would stop making noise. I couldn’t breathe. I remember the certainty that I was going to die or be raped as I was choked unconscious,” she recalled.
“PJ heard my screams and ran to help. He came running shirtless, carrying a bat or pipe — I’m not sure which, because I never saw him in action. He scared my attacker, who ran. PJ chased him to the building he fled to. Because of the chase, the police were able to identify him, a repeat sexual offender,” Watts added.
“PJ saved me. I’m not sure if I would have the same life if he hadn’t run down that night,” she continued, sharing a link to a GoFundMe page supporting Ransone’s wife, Jamie, and their two young children.
“What’s especially hard for me with PJ’s passing is that he lived with that kind of violence. What I was spared, he endured in a different form, at an age where there is no emotional defense, and the self is still forming,” she wrote. “I get the sense that PJ’s life was haunted by what happened to him then. This world is rarely gentle to people who are hurt, vulnerable, acting out.”
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In 2021, Ransone spoke publicly about having been sexually abused as a child by one of his teachers. He shared the allegations on his social media accounts after the Baltimore County police conducted an investigation and declined to pursue charges against the teacher.
“Over the years, I have thought of PJ from time to time,” Watts admitted. “I wanted to reach out to him to let him know how grateful I was that he ran towards my screams. I didn’t. I regret that.”
Before his death, Ransone wrote on his personal website, poignantly reflecting on fatherhood.
“Fatherhood cracked me wide open,” he said. “It made me see myself with a level of honesty I’d been avoiding. It made me want to become someone my child could look up to. And with that came shame — shame I didn’t even know was still living in me.”
Ransone was also known for his performances in horror movies, including It Chapter Two, Sinister, Sinister 2, In a Valley of Violence, Black Phone, and Black Phone 2, which was his final project.
