The exterior of the cinderblock cell at a residence in Klamath Falls, photographed in August.

Klamath Falls Mayor Carol Westfall said Thursday she didn’t know about the makeshift cell built inside the garage of a home she rented to a man now accused of imprisoning a woman inside the cinder block box.

But after the arrest of her tenant, Negasi Zuberi, she got a good look.

“Shocking,” Westfall said on the witness stand when a prosecutor asked what her reaction had been.

After renting the house to Zuberi in February 2023, she had driven by the home at least once when the garage door was open but couldn’t see anything inside, she said.

She later learned that blue sheet or blanket hanging inside the garage apparently obscured her view, she said.

Zuberi, 30, is charged with kidnapping a woman in Seattle last year and driving her to Klamath Falls, where he is accused of locking her in the cell. The woman testified Wednesday that Zuberi sexually assaulted her on the drive to Oregon while her she was in handcuffs and leg irons.

Zuberi’s trial began this week in the James A. Redden U.S. Courthouse in Medford. He has pleaded not guilty to kidnapping the Seattle woman and a second woman from Klamath Falls.

Westfall said she rented the two-story home on North Eldorado Avenue on Feb. 1, 2023, to Zuberi for $2,000 a month. Zuberi said he was going to live there with his two children, she testified. He had no permission to sublease the home, which she later learned he did, the mayor said.

Kevin Westfall, the mayor’s husband who works as a contractor, said he had a new roof installed, added concrete patios and painted the interior and exterior of the home before Zuberi rented it. He made repairs to the rental home and collected rent – and had received a call from Zuberi on the morning of July 15, 2023.

Zuberi asked him how to turn the heat down in the garage, he testified.

That was the same morning when the Seattle woman said she was kept in the cell. She testified about how hot it was inside the cell and how she had pleaded with Zuberi to lower the heat sometime early that morning when she was placed in it.

Kevin Westfall said he didn’t return Zuberi’s call until mid-afternoon, which would have been after the Seattle woman said she escaped from the garage just before noon.

Later that day, Kevin Westfall said a neighbor notified him and his wife that they “might want to come up and take a look” at their rental home after it appeared to be the focus of a police investigation.

Kevin Westfall said he was “rather surprised” when he saw the structure built in the garage.

He and his son, Brandon Westfall, used sledgehammers to dismantle the blocks after the FBI allowed the family access to the home.

He estimated that they hauled more than 10,000 pounds of concrete rubble or cinder block residue to a local dump after spending 11 hours taking the cell apart.

Nine days after Zuberi’s arrest, the mother of Zuberi’s children, Alycia Westfall, who is not related to the mayor’s family, contacted the mayor, saying she was cleaning up “a lot of trash.” The mayor offered to help her.

Alycia Westfall then asked her “if she could throw away this particular box,” the mayor testified.

“What’s in the box?” Carol Westfall said she asked.

“She said there’s evidence,” the mayor recalled. “I said I’m not touching anything.”

The cardboard box, which appeared to contain paperwork, was among the items loaded into Kevin Westfall’s trailer as the couple prepared to take garbage bags from their rental home to the dump.

Carol Westfall said she told her husband to remove the cardboard box from the load and alerted police to pick up the box.

The mayor said she had listed the home for rent on Craigslist and Zuberi was one of three or four candidates. She said she found the name of the property management company, Forty3Organization, where he said he worked, online, and he signed a lease for “just him and his two children.”

Two other men who subleased rooms in the home from Zuberi testified that they hardly spoke to him and never went in the home’s garage.

Zuberi faces two counts of kidnapping, one count of transportation for criminal sexual activity and gun charges. The trial is estimated to last three weeks.