The Wire star James Ransone has been hailed as a hero by a woman he saved from an attempted assault.
Ransone, 46, died by suicide on Dec. 19. He is survived by his wife, Jamie McPhee, and their two children, Jack and Violet.
On Tuesday, an Instagram post by a woman named Molly Watts revealed a horrific incident that happened when she and Ransone were neighbors in New York City in 2006.
Ransone, known as “PJ” to his friends, intervened when she was attacked on the threshold of their building.
“I screamed for help,” Watts recalled. “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 said the actor heard her screams and ran to help her, shirtless, and carrying a weapon she could not identify in the heat of the moment.
“He scared my attacker, who ran,” she said. “PJ chased him to the building he fled to. Because of the chase, the police were able to identify him, a repeat sexual offender. PJ saved me.”
She said that Ransone changed “the trajectory” of her life with his actions. “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.”
Ransone was best known for playing Chester “Ziggy” Sobotka in the second series of David Simon’s acclaimed HBO drama The Wire in 2003. He also had roles in Generation Kill, Sinister, It Chapter Two, The Black Phone, and Poker Face.
In 2021, the actor revealed he had been sexually abused by a math tutor when he was a teenager. “This isn’t really about me as a victim anymore,” he said in an interview with The Baltimore Sun, stating that he came forward with this trauma so that children would not be exposed to the alleged abuser.
He was also honest about his struggles with heroin addiction; he became sober at the age of 27.
In her Instagram post, Watts also touched on the actor’s personal history.
“What’s especially hard for me with PJ’s passing is that he lived with that kind of violence,” she wrote. “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 believed that Ransone was still “haunted” by what happened in his youth.
“This world is rarely gentle to people who are hurt, vulnerable, acting out,” Watts wrote. “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 toward my screams. I didn’t. I regret that.”
After his death, Ransone’s wife posted her own tribute on social media. “I told you I have loved you 1,000 times before and I know I will love you again,” McPhee wrote on Instagram.
“You told me—I need to be more like you and you need to be more like me—and you were so right. Thank you for giving me the greatest gifts—you, Jack, and Violet. We are forever.”
A GoFundMe page set up for McPhee and their two children has already raised over $160,000. The page refers to Ransone as a “beloved husband, father, and friend,” who “was funny, magnetic, brilliant, and endlessly alive.”
If you or a loved one are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please reach out to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing or texting 988.
