Backpacker saved from ‘ kidnapper’ ... thanks to texts to her British dad
A BRITISH backpacker has been rescued from a bizarre apparent kidnapping in Australia after she sent chilling texts to her father showing her location.
Mary Kate Heys, 20, from Manchester, claimed she was abducted from an Australian hostel yesterday.
Miss Heys said she was taken from Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, by a man who was possibly mentally unstable.
Although she initially agreed to travel with him – as she was concerned for his safety – she later became concerned after being driven more than 50 miles up the coast. Her text messages began: ‘Dad, are you awake? I need you to call Australian police.’
She then wrote: ‘I’ve been taken by a man... please hurry.’
Her father – understood to be called Antony – phoned the police and she kept covertly sending him messages with her location attached, using the Google mapping service, so she could be tracked by police. She described how, earlier, she had met the 22year- old Swedish man in her accommodation. He woke her early on Monday morning ‘in a manic state’, asking her to go to Brisbane with him. The man later told her they would go as far as Cairns, to get ‘away from the aliens’.
During the journey she convinced him she needed to stop for a drink, and the pair pulled over at a petrol station. Miss Heys told staff to call police, but after an hour no officers had arrived and she got back into the car. She eventually managed to get the car pulled over after sending her father more messages.
Miss Heys had warned her father not to call her and revealed she was travelling in a silver Peugeot. During the exchange, she told him not to worry but later admitted she was ‘getting scared’. He tried to reassure Miss Heys, telling her that police were on their way and knew her exact location before she confirmed they had arrived and she was safe.
‘I’m here, I’m safe, I’m with them,’ her messages read. ‘Thank you so much,’ she wrote, adding: ‘I will call you once I’ve finished with them.’ A Queensland police spokesman said: ‘She has said that she was being held against her will. So it was a deprivation of liberty job. Police ... have spoken to both parties involved. He [the alleged kidnapper] was then taken to the hospital but I believe he did go to the mental health unit there.’
But Miss Heys told officers she did not want to press charges. ‘There is no further action from our end,’ the police spokesman added.