House Of Horrors Survivor Amanda Berry Phones Her Dad & Grandmother – Hear The Emotional Call
May 8 2013, Published 10:28 a.m. ET
We’re learning new details Wednesday about the emotionally-charged first phone calls Amanda Berry made to her dad and other family members in wake of her stunning escape from a house of horrors in Cleveland, Ohio.
Amanda – abducted at the age of ten in 2003 and held prisoner for a decade -- called her family in Elizabethton, TN on Monday night – only a few hours after her dramatic rescue. She first spoke to her father.
"She said, 'Hi daddy, I'm alive,'" Johnny Berry told WJHL-TV,the CBS affiliate in Johnson City, TN., of the call he received around 11 p.m. "She said, 'I love you, I love you, I love you,' and then we both started crying. You wouldn't believe it. There are no words for it. I told her I never lost hope."
Although Berry, now 27, was born and raised in Cleveland, her father, grandparents and cousins all live in Tennessee. At one time, most of the family lived in Ohio too, but they moved back south more than a decade ago.
The family says that over the years, Amanda often visited Elizabethton during the summers, and her family also visited her in Cleveland. The last time they saw her was in Ohio just three weeks before she mysteriously disappeared in 2003 -- on the night before her 17th birthday.
"It's awesome," Amanda’s cousin Crystal Milton exclaimed before she was able to talk with Amanda on the phone, reported WJHL-TV. "Me and her are so close because we're only two years apart. We always spent our summers together. I went there. She came down here. I love it. I never thought we'd see this day, but I'm glad we did."
A few minutes after Crystal made her comments, Amanda’s sister called from Cleveland and handed the phone over to her -- and WJHL-TV was there to record the moving exchange between Amanda and her grandmother F