When Garrett and Christina Muedeking heard the doorbell ring about 8 p.m. Tuesday, they thought it might be a solicitor or a friend returning to their house in St. Paul’s North End.

Instead it was an injured teen, handcuffed and chained at the wrists and ankles, pleading for help.

The young man had a terrible story to tell: He had been abducted from North Minneapolis, strangled from behind while walking down the street. He lost consciousness and woke up, bound and blindfolded, in the basement of a house where he would be held for four days and told that his family would be hurt if he resisted. Eventually he freed himself and crawled away to seek help. He said he was 19.

St. Paul police said they arrested Wilbert Glover, 55, of St. Paul on suspicion of kidnapping and sexual assault.

The Ramsey County attorney’s office on Wednesday charged Glover with felony kidnapping and first-degree felony criminal sexual conduct. He was being held in lieu of $1 million bail. His first court appearance is scheduled for Monday.

According to the Illinois Department of Corrections, Glover was sent to prison there after he was convicted of murder, attempted murder and aggravated kidnapping in Cook County. He was released on parole in September 2008.

The criminal complaint said the victim told police he was walking along a street Friday in North Minneapolis when an unknown person came up behind him and began to choke him. The teenager said he tried to fight back but passed out. When he awoke, he was blindfolded and bound in metal restraints in an unknown place, the complaint said. He pulled the blindfold from his eyes, but the kidnapper sprayed him with Mace and told him not to remove the blindfold, the complaint said.

The victim said the abductor, whom he never saw, repeatedly sexually assaulted him for several days, the complaint said. The victim said his attacker sounded like an older man, the complaint said.

On Tuesday, while the attacker was away from the house, the victim pulled his blindfold away and removed his left wrist from the cuffs, the complaint said. He discovered he was in a basement and chained to a bar set in a concrete wall, the complaint said. He pulled hard on his chains and freed himself from the wall, the complaint said. Then he turned off the power to the house at the fusebox and went up the stairs, taking a fire extinguisher he had found in the stairwell, the complaint said.

He used the fire extinguisher to break out the bathroom window at the rear of the house and escaped through the window, trying to find a neighbor to help him, the complaint said.

“He wanted to use the phone; he wanted to call his mom,” Christina Muedeking said of the stranger who appeared at the door at her home in the 1300 block of Marion Street, trying to force his way in.

The couple said the teen was dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt and socks, but no shoes. And he was manacled.

He was also still carrying the fire extinguisher, the Muedikings said.

The Muedekings said the victim also had bruises on both wrists and a red mark around his neck.

“It looked like someone had put a shoelace around it,” Garrett Muedeking said.

The victim also was carrying a rolled up T-shirt with duct tape, the couple said. That had been his blindfold.

The criminal complaint said that when police arrived minutes later, the youth was crying, had blood around the eyes, scabbed bind wounds around his neck and scabs on his wrists and ankles from the restraints.

“His eyes looked like they were bleeding,” Christina Muedeking said.

“He was breathing heavily and had soiled clothing,” the complaint said.

The victim said his abductor told him that he had his identification and knew where his family lived and that they would be hurt if he tried to escape, the Muedekings said.

“He was really worried about his family,” Garrett Muedeking said, adding that the police sent a squad car to the victim’s family address to check on their well-being.

“I brought him a glass of water,” Christina Muedeking said of the young man. “He just took a couple of sips.”

Garrett Muedeking said the victim told them how he escaped: He turned off the power in the house where was held, got out through a window and crawled, rolled and hobbled to find someone who would help him.

“He said this was the third house he had been to,” Christina Muedeking said.

The complaint said police canvassed the neighborhood and, two doors from the Muedekings, they found a house with a broken back window large enough for a person to crawl out.

Mail in the mailbox at that house was addressed to Wilbert Glover, and the electric meter on the house had not moved in several hours, indicating the power was turned off, the complaint said.

The complaint said police determined the house was owned by a rental company. Several home security cameras were around the yard, and all the basement windows were covered with boards, the complaint said. When police searched the house, they found the victim’s identification inside, the complaint said. The basement walls were painted in dark colors, a mattress was on the basement floor and a pipe protruded from the wall with straps attached to it, the complaint said. A 5-gallon bucket in the basement contained used condoms, and handcuffs were on the top step of the stairway leading to the basement, the complaint said.

Neighbors told police that an older man who drove a purple Cadillac sedan and a silver Mercedes sedan lived at the house.

While police were at the house, a silver Mercedes arrived and parked nearby, the complaint said. The driver was Glover, who records showed owned a 2008 Cadillac CTS and a 2003 Mercedes, according to the complaint.

Glover denied he lived in the area, according to the complaint, but the house’s owner later confirmed that Glover had been a tenant since Oct. 1, 2014.

Frances Seigler, who lives across the street from Glover’s house, said she met him when he first moved to the neighborhood, probably less than a year ago.

Although they chatted occasionally, and Glover borrowed her lawnmower, he wasn’t overly friendly and she didn’t know much about him, she said. He had two children and an ex-wife, Seigler recalls him telling her, and he worked “day and night” in Minneapolis, though she couldn’t recall what he did.

The criminal complaint said Glover declined to talk to police. In a holding cell, he repeatedly banged his head on a door frame. Officers found him in a fetal position on the floor near a pool of blood from the head injury, according to the complaint, which said the incident was captured by video surveillance.

Richard Chin can be reached at 651-228-5560. Elizabeth Mohr can be reached at 651-228-5162.

Follow her at twitter.com/LizMohr.