Divinia Hall
Appearances
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
Tyler was shaking and crying. He was very, very upset. He had a gun pointed at his side the entire time we were there. I just kept trying to hold his hand, tell him that I love him. I mean, I tried to tell him it's gonna be okay, but how do you tell somebody it's gonna be okay when they have a gun in their side?
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
These men pulled my dad and I out of the driver's side and my dad instantly just wrapped his arms around me and he hugged me and he told me he was sorry and that he loved me. And they pulled my mom and my brother out of the passenger's side.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
Because of how big my dad's truck was, we couldn't see my mom and my brother. So we rounded the back of the truck, and my brother was laying face down, and so was my mom. And both of their bodies were covered with a sleeping bag. And right then and there, I thought they were dead.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
They forced my dad and I down on the ground with my mom and my brother.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
I could hear my brother crying and I could feel him shaking. We all just laid there and they threw a pillow on the back of my dad and I's head. At that point, I really thought this was it, execution style, to the back of the head, all of us laying here. We were going to die. I told my brother that I loved him. I told my mom and dad that I loved them. It was kind of like, just wait for it.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
You know, is this gonna hurt? Am I gonna know what just happened? But it never came.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
And we laid there and the truck drove away. And we laid there. And they were gone. They were just gone. And after probably 10 minutes of laying there, my dad got brave enough to stick his head up and look around and realized there was nobody around.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
Our first reaction was to get up, get out, get away. My mom wanted to find a place to stay until daylight so we could see what we were doing, where we were going. And everybody else felt, no, we need to get out of this situation. What if they come back?
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
We were all in shorts because we had just come from Cabo where it was 90 degrees out. Being the middle of November, in the middle of the night, it was about 48 degrees, I believe.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
We probably walked down the mountain for 45 minutes to an hour. We saw a light, a very faint light in the distance. And it was a trailer, and we could hear dogs barking.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
And so my mom started yelling, help. Somebody came out and fired two rounds in our direction. Now we're getting shot at.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
We'd been pulled over by police before. It's never really been a big deal. So he pulled over.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
We ducked and hit the ground just trying to get as low as possible to get out of any potential line of fire.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
If you don't prepare yourself for the worst, you know, how are you going to get through it when it comes? You're not necessarily always safe when you think you are. In 2001, my freshman year of high school, there was a school shooting.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
I happened to be in a cooking class. You could hear screaming and just chaos.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
People were running into the classroom saying, he's got a gun. There's somebody with a gun. The next hallway over from where I was, another freshman was coming out of the bathroom, just shooting. No real target, just shooting. The SWAT team came into the classroom. It was a team of three or four men. They had us one by one go out of the classroom.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
The shooter was Andy Williams. He was a fellow freshman. It was a kid that said he was bullied.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
She was really scared. It was instant crying and hugging and just so happy to see them. I mean, he took two lives, and he permanently mentally wounded a lot of people.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
I think the school shooting forced me to grow up a lot faster than most teenagers grow up.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
I'm in flip-flops. My mom's in flip-flops. Everybody's in sandals. It's very slippery. My legs were getting cut up by the brush, and we kept falling.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
And my mom told the woman, if you don't hear from us in a few hours, please call my dad, so my grandpa. And the woman said, you'll be fine. They're going to take you home. These police are going to take you home. And she wrote down their names, their truck number, their license plate number, every detail about them.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
And when they were driving us to the border, they were going away that I've never been to the border. And I think that made my mom and I both very nervous. The officer that was driving, he shook his head and he looked down and said, you need to go home. It's not safe for you in here.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
So at that point, there was nowhere we could go. They really trapped us in.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
And so they rushed us up to the border and they got out of the car and both of the officers hugged my entire family and we thanked them as much as we could. And they said, go.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
And we called my cousin, and we called him collect, and he came to pick us up.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
At the time we were under the impression they were police because they pulled us over like they were police and they were very well organized, but truly we didn't know.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
At the time, I had no idea who they were, and I still don't know who these people are.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
I'd sleep maybe an hour to a night. Pretty much ran on energy drinks.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
The therapist and my parents both felt that I should go see a therapist on my own based off the fact that this is not my first traumatic experience.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
I know exactly what I was wearing, and it's been eight years. And that sticks in my head every day. I think with any traumatic event, your personality changes. I don't know whether mine was for the good or for the worse.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
They all had guns with silencers on them. They told us to put our heads down and shut up. I remember my brother saying, oh God no, please no. After being told for I don't know how many times that you're gonna die, there's not a lot of other options to think.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
And we had a lot of fun. I don't think there's anything that's going to take the place of Mexico just because it's such a different world down there.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
There were so many times that were good that completely outweigh the bad.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
It's just going to have to be something that was once upon a time for us.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
When all this was happening, a guy climbed into the truck on my brother's side.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
He's very adventurous. Ever since my dad would take him, he would jump in a car. and help out where he could with changing tires or handing a driver a water bottle. Anything he could do to spend the day in the dirt.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
We got up really early in the morning to drive home. At first we were caravanning on the way home and those caravans get a little broken up.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
My dad said, please take it all. Leave us here. Just whatever you want, take it. Leave us here. And the guy took his gun and put it to my dad's forehead and said, shut up. I was so afraid that I was gonna watch my dad get shot right there in front of me six inches from where I was standing.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
When I was a kid, I had a strange fear of being kidnapped. That always scared me. It always freaked me out that there might be somebody that wanted to take me and I'd never see my family again. We were headed home from a family vacation in Mexico. Family trips to Mexico have always been wonderful, and we've been going for as long as I can remember.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
They drove us onto a dirt road up into the mountains above Tijuana. I don't know exactly where I was because they made us keep our heads down and they stopped.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
Where's all the money? My dad told them, I'm just a truck driver. There's no race car. I'm just a truck driver. I think these people wanted money. I think they thought we were somebody who we weren't.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
I remember them rubbing down my legs to check my pockets and my pants. I remember somebody grabbing at my neck, looking for any jewelry.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
It was creepy. I didn't want them near me. I know my dad didn't like the fact that they were running, you know, grabbing at my legs and my neck and stuff, trying to look for things. And I couldn't imagine having to watch his daughter have that happen.
48 Hours
Kidnapped on Highway 1
My mom kept asking these guys to please just leave my babies here and take what they want, just leave the kids alone. And they were mocking her. She would say, please just leave my babies here. And they would be like, oh, please, please just leave my babies here. It was cruel.