Kidnapped from a Sunshine Coast hostel yesterday, a British backpacker sent terrified text messages back to her dad in the UK asking him to contact the Australian police.
Mary Kate Heys, 20, told The Courier Mail that she thought she was ‘going to die’.
Her abductor – a 22-year-old Swedish traveller who she’d met a few nights earlier at the hostel – woke her at 4.30am in a ‘manic state’ asking her to ‘go on an adventure’.
‘He said we were going to Brisbane on an adventure and I was really concerned, his eyes were all wide and I couldn’t tell if he was on drugs or not,’ Ms Heys said.
Worried for the man’s safety, she jumped in the car with him. Soon, she realised her mistake.
”He took off really fast and that’s when I realised I was in trouble.’
‘He kept talking about how ‘they’ were coming to get us and we had to get to Cairns to escape, I was so scared and I thought I was going to die.’
Finally, she convinced the man to stop at a petrol station so she could get a drink.
‘I told the woman at the counter don’t look out the window and draw attention but can you please call the police and take down that numberplate because the man I am with won’t let me leave,’ Ms Heys told The Courier Mail.
Still no sign of the police an hour later, she decided to message her dad to ask him to alert the Australian police.
‘I was using maps to direct him (the driver) to Cairns and I kept pretending there was something wrong with the app so I could secretly message my dad to call the police.’
‘He thinks she’s an alien,’ Ms Heys wrote in one frantic message to her dad.
Ms Heys told The Courier Mail that the police pulled the car over at Gympie.
‘When the police car finally put its lights on I have never been so relieved in my life,’ she said.
According to The Courier Mail, Ms Heys said as soon as her kidnapper slowed she leapt out of the car and ran.
‘I didn’t even wait for it to stop moving, I just ran out because I was so terrified,’ she said.
Texting her dad to let him know she was safe, Ms Heys made a statement at the Gympie police station.
‘In the end I have decided not to press charges because (he) has been taken to a mental hospital and will be deported, I think he needs help rather than going to jail,’ she said.
According to The Courier Mail, Queensland Police confirmed an incident had taken place in the Gympie area but would not comment further.
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