Late Actor James Ransone’s Friend Reveals He Saved Her From Assault: ‘What I Was Spared, He Endured’

A former acquaintance of late actor James Ransone wrote a heartbreaking tribute to the actor on Monday, December 22, revealing that he  once saved her from a horrific assault.

“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,” Molly Watts wrote on Instagram of her former New York City neighbor, who died by suicide at 47 on December 19.

“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,” Watts wrote.

“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,” she continued. “PJ chased him to the building he fled to. Because of the chase, the police were able to identify him, a repeat sexual offender.”

There were people who lived on the ground floor who did not respond to her cries for help, she later added in the comments section.

“PJ saved me. I’m not sure if I would have the same life if he hadn’t run down that night. Even as an adult, I’m not sure how I would have handled the weight of what could have happened or how long it would take to heal — I was already emotionally fragile,” wrote Watts, who is now a Yale PhD candidate, per her LinkedIn page.

“What’s especially hard for me with PJ’s passing is that he lived with that kind of violence,” she added, referencing the Wire alum’s 2021 disclosure that he had been sexually abused by a math tutor for six months when he was around 13 years old, which he believed led to his heroin and alcohol addiction issues.

“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,” Watts 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.””

Over the years, I have thought of PJ from time to time. I wanted to reach out to him to let him know how grateful I was that he ran towards my screams,” she concluded. “I didn’t. I regret that.

Watts ended her post by sharing the link to the GoFundMe set up for his son Jack, 6, and Violet, 4.

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