An American tourist in Uganda earlier this month spoke out about her time in captivity, revealing the thoughts that ran through her mind before she was saved.
In a “CBS This Morning” interview that aired Thursday, Kimberly Endicott, who was on safari in National Park when four armed men kidnapped her and her driver, said that she contemplated how she could have died.
“How do I get them to shoot me … instead of dismembering me or raping me?” she remembered thinking. “How do I get them to do that? What can I do that will actually create that? And I could never actually come up with a strategy for that. If I ran, I think that would just make them angry and I think I would probably get treated pretty badly if I tried to run.”
On April 7, Ugandan police and its associated , who was held for nearly five days with her driver, Jean Paul Mirenge Remezo, .
The kidnappers demanded $500,000 for the pair’s release, and a ransom was paid, though the amount and the identity of the donor remain unknown, .
The two had been on an evening game outing through the park when Endicott .
“We’re sitting there and all of a sudden four men come out of a perfectly square bush that’s in front of us,” she told CBS. “And my first thought was there must be something happening behind us and that these are rangers.”
Endicott explained that she had been gorilla trekking in the past, and since the guides were armed, she didn’t immediately assume the men were a threat.
“Looking at them it became apparent pretty quickly that, no, that’s not what this is. They were not in uniform. They were ragtag. They were a little bit of everything,” she said.
She was then forced to get out of the vehicle and sit on the ground ― a moment she remembers having experienced terror.
“There’s really not a word to describe what that felt like. Pure fear. But that almost doesn’t do it justice,” she said.
Shortly after Endicott’s rescue, CNN reported that Ugandan police apprehended eight people they believed had “.” Officials also heightened security in the park.
