Kidnapping victim who escaped by jumping out of car trunk shares her experience

 

Video footage emerged last week of a brave kidnapping victim who escaped her abductor by jumping out of a car trunk at a gas station in Alabama (read here). The woman has been identified as Brittany Diggs, 25, and she has shared the story of how she was able to pull off the escape.


In an interview with the Today Show, Brittany, who is a nursing student, said her abductor threatened to kill her if she didn't withdraw cash from her bank accounts and ATM card. He forced her into her car trunk and was driving her to Birmingham where he was to withdraw the money. He also forced her to give him her PIN number after he found her wallet with her cards in the car.

"The whole time he's driving, he's, like, just, he's yelling at me from the front seat, 'You're lying. I know you have something. Give me your money,'" she said.

The kidnapper stopped at a first gas station to withdraw money from his victim's account. He later stopped at a second gas station to withdraw more money from her account using the ATM and threatened her that if it doesn't work he would drive the car into a river and drown her.

Panic set in then and that was when Brittany came up with the idea of using the light on her insulin pump to illuminate the trunk and help her find the inside latch.

"I just got the bright idea to use my insulin pump light, which is not a bright light, but it was bright enough to see. So I had to put it right on top of it to look and see for the latch," she said.

 "I'm holding the latch like this, waiting for him to get back in the car. He gets in, he's yelling ... and I feel the car reversing, and he's pulling out pretty fast, so I'm, like, 'Oh shoot - I better get out of here.'"

The kidnapper continued driving, unaware that his victim had escaped.

The incident has left Brittany traumatised to the extent that she no longer wants her car and she hasn't been able to sleep in her apartment since then. She is making moves to relocate and her friends have already created a GoFundMe account to that effect.

"I try to put it in the back of my head so I can just get through the day, but that was the scariest thing that I've had to do. It was just a lot because I'm not from here, I don't have the support system down here besides my roommate. I just felt like it was a lot."