I Immediately Grabbed the Barrel of His Gun

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That's MacWeldon.com, promo code MAC25. This episode contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. I heard a loud bang. I knew I was hit. I knew it was close range, and I knew that it wasn't good. Real people. We knew we had to get out right away, that this mine's going to fill up with water quick. Who faced death.

And then he pulled my head up, and then he took that knife and just sawed back and forth. And lived to tell how. You're going to watch everybody drown. We knew it was time. We had an hour left.

This is I Survived. It's January 2002 in Altus, Oklahoma. Alga works in the office of her church. I come in about 8 o'clock every morning. They'll stay until 4. I take requests for prayer for people wherever they happen to be or whatever their problem is. The church advertised for a part-time handyman. The man, Randall Mitchell, asked us to call him Mitch. He came applying for a job at our church as a painter, the fellow who hires. checked with the police department to see.

if everything was in order, and as far as they said, it was okay. So he came in, he was a pleasant kind of young man. He did his work well, but he did wander over the building quite a bit. I had asked him if he would like to earn some money for Christmas. And he came out to my house and did some work on a wooden fence. And I paid him, and that was the end of that.

A week later, $130 was stolen from Alga's office at the church. Alga found out that Mitch had been in her office that day. So the administrator... I suppose he questioned the people that were in the building. And he did call the police. I was almost convinced that he had taken the money, but I had no evidence. So I didn't pursue it. It was about two weeks after the money was missing that he came to my front door. This was on Sunday afternoon.

Alga lived alone on the outskirts of town. I went to the door and it was Mitch. And he said, I'd like to move those planks that I left there earlier. And it didn't seem like an odd request because he was finishing the job. Mitch had earlier repaired a fence at Alga's house. He asked Alga for her keys so that he could move her car. I handed the keys to him.

And when he got the keys and his eyes narrowed in, he says, I'm going to kill you. I said, what do you mean? What are you talking about? He wasn't laughing or anything like that. He just says, I'm going to kill you. He just shoved me back into the utility room and into the kitchen. And by that time, I knew he meant business. I mean, he changed from this soft-spoken person that I'm going to do something nice.

to all of a sudden, I'm going to kill you. He grabbed me by the arm and he shoved me back through the house. As he was pushing me back into the bedroom, I knew there was no escape. No one knew what was happening. I nearly panicked because I did not want to be violated and I did not know what he had in mind. He's 36 years old, was 36 years old, and had a hold of my arm pushing me in there. So I knew that I had no strength to run from him or get away from him.

It's a bad situation. But he shoved me, pushed me down on the bed and said, give me all of your jewelry. I said, Mitch, I don't wear expensive jewelry. And then is when he lifted. his left hand up, and he had a pipe wrench in his hand, and he hit me in the head. I put my hand up to ward off it when I saw it coming, and he pushed my hand down. He did, he hit me four times. He hit me hard and it was, the blood flowed. It flowed all over the bed, the floor, even went on the curtains.

Then he threw me on the floor and he had grabbed the telephone and had pulled the wires out and he tied my hands behind my back. And he reached in the closet, and he got a belt, and he tied my ankles together. I had no idea what was going to happen, but I certainly wasn't ready for it, and I didn't want it to happen.

He just wanted jewelry. He wanted money. He had to kill me. And then he began to pull me, just jerking me, actually, through the house. And he did. All the way down the hallway, through the foyer.

through the den, through the kitchen, utility room, and out in the garage. It was a long way. He'd put me in the, just dumped me into the... The trunk of my car, the trunk of the car is not big enough to accommodate me. So I was really doubled up quite a bit. I was alert. I had not been addled. And so when he got in the car and he started out, I tried to decide where we were going. I knew no one else knew where I was.

But I've read enough books to know that you're supposed to keep your head. And I was trying my best and trying to get loose from getting my hands loose. And I did. Imprisoned and bleeding, Alga had no idea where Mitch was taking her. He eventually stopped the car beside an irrigation ditch on the outskirts of town. He had already said he was going to kill me, so...

I figured that's what he was going to do. I'm a praying person and have been. I'm a person of faith. And I began to pray for him that good would be in him and not this evil that was. causing him to do this. Also, I prayed that I wouldn't be mean and ugly, although he was trying to kill me. Well, the next thing I knew, he opened the back of the trunk. And I stayed very, very still, held my breath because I didn't want him to realize that I was still alive. He closed it and left.

I did not know the passing of time. I know that it seemed like a long time. But then when you're hurting, anything seems long. My scalp was bleeding very much. Of course, that was coming down my face and all this. As the night wore on, the temperature dropped to the low 20s. Alga, who was only wearing light clothes, had been in the trunk for 11 hours. I was so cold.

There was, I felt around in the trunk of the car to see if there's anything in there that I could, and there was a piece of paper, and I would put that. paper, like on my knee. It's amazing how you think you're warm when you're not. Then I'd put it on my hip and I'd put it on my shoulder, whichever one was up, because it was cold in there.

And my hands were freezing. It was some time later that he came back. I, again, lay very, very still, and I kept my hands hidden so he wouldn't know that I had... Come become untied. I didn't say anything. I just very very still But I looked up and I could see the stars I get that and then the light from the the trunk of the car, I saw he had a knife and he was ready to plunge it into my chest. I fought for the knife. It's a serrated kind of knife.

And so as I struggled with that, then he broke my fingers because I was hanging on for dear life. And he slashed my right arm to the bone. Then he grabbed me by the hair, and then he pulled my head up, and then he took that knife and just sawed back and forth until the blood began to spurt out. I knew that I would not live very long. He took my head and he twisted it real quick. And there was a cracking sound. And I went limp. I thought that he had broken my neck. And he thought that too.

Mitch locked the trunk and left Alga there to die. I knew I did not have very much time to live. I couldn't with the blood going that fast. I put my hands up. And my hands were so cold and that blood was so warm. No one knew where I was. Nobody at the church knew where I was. No one except Mitch and God. I knew that it wasn't going to be very long that I was going to meet my maker. And so I just said, Lord, please, why is it taking so long? I spent a lot of time thinking.

and praying because there wasn't anything else there to do. And I just was sure I was going to die. I was coming to the end of my resources. When Alga did not arrive at work on Monday, police began to search for her. Twenty hours after her ordeal began, Alga heard voices outside her car. I heard a woman's voice, so I knew it was safe. And somebody said, is there anybody in there? And I said, yes. They said, are you hurt? And I said, yes. Are you shot or stabbed?

Well, I really was slashed, but I didn't have that option, so I said, stabbed. Just as quick as they took me out of the trunk of the car, I said, Mitch at the church did this. By that time, they had evidently called the ambulance. And so they were lifting me out. And my lips were blue. My face was white. And my hair was red. They said, oh, you were red, white, and blue. Well, they covered me up. Oh, you just don't know how warm that blanket felt. It was so, so warm.

After being rescued from the trunk of her car, Alga was raced to the hospital. They did surgery that night, and they had to do all this because where he had gone back and forth in my neck, it was just chopped up with that. serrated knife, and they had to do 60-some stitches in it. My scalp, they had to staple that.

Practically all of my fingers have been, either they've been twisted or they've been broken and now they have arthritis in them. So what's there is, you know, they hurt most of the time. Mitch was arrested and charged with attempted murder, extortion, and kidnapping. He was sentenced to 55 years in prison with no parole. I don't hold anything against him because I have gotten that.

taken care of. I do not believe you can hold things like that within you and still be the person you need to be. And so I forgave him while I was still in the trunk of the car. Mitch suffered a heart attack and died in prison. Maybe it's because of a life that I've lived and I know that you can't live with anger and bitterness and hatred. It just won't work. I survived because of my faith. I didn't give up. Although I thought I was going to die, I didn't really give up.

I would have to say that my faith gave me strength when there was nothing else. Save on family favorites with digital coupons at Tom Thumb. This week at Tom Thumb, get boneless, skinless chicken breast or thighs for the member price of $1.75 per pound with digital coupon. Limit 10 pounds each. Plus, get selected varieties of 6 to 8-ounce lucerne juice. cheese for the member price of $1.77 each with digital coupon.

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It's July 2002 at the Kew Creek Mine in Pennsylvania. Blaine, a coal miner, works the night shift at the Kew Creek Mine. His father-in-law, also a miner, works on the same shift. We was roughly a half a mile in in this mine, a half a mile straight in, and then we went a half a mile to the left. So actually, we was a mile deep inside the ground and 250 feet below the surface level.

Blaine was used to working in the cramped four-foot-high tunnels of the coal mine. It was probably an hour, hour and a half left on our shift until he was ready to go home, and I heard this big roar. As soon as I heard the noise, my heart actually dropped because I had no clue what it was and I knew something was seriously wrong. A miner had accidentally drilled into an unmapped neighboring mine.

Abandoned 50 years ago, the old mine had filled up with water. Millions of gallons of stagnant water exploded into Kew Creek Mine. It was a roar that I never heard before. I jumped out of the scoop and went to my father-in-law and Randy Fogle, which was the boss, and they said, get everybody down to the feeder that we hit water. We have to get out of the mine.

I probably had the least experience in the mines. I was roughly five and a half, six years in the mines at this time, and a lot of the guys were 20 and 30 year veterans. And at that time, I could see the concern on everybody's face that we was in serious trouble. It was like...

drilling into a bottom of a dam or a reservoir, and this water was just that much pressure. It was shooting by us. The water was that loud. It sounded like a jet engine or maybe a locomotive. It's hard to explain. It was just... A very loud roar.

We're over here and the water is shooting in on this side of us, and as it's getting farther down into mine, it starts separating into all these tunnel entries. For the first couple hundred feet, the pressure is that much that it's not even touching these sacks. It just blown right by them. And as it's slowing its pace of speed, that's when it starts diverting its water everywhere. Roaring through the narrow tunnels, the water was funneled to the bottom of the mine.

With the lower levels flooded, the rising tide then began to engulf the entire mine. We knew we had to get out right away, that this mine's going to fill up with water quick. We was gathering everybody up at the feeder to start heading out of the mine when we realized Mo Popernak was on the other side of the water. Mo Popernak was trapped beyond the 20-foot wide wall of Roaring Water.

We went over to see if we could get him, and at this time we could not get him. He told us that to leave without him, which we made the decision, eight of us, that we would have to leave him behind. He thought he was going to die by himself. We knew we had to go roughly a half a mile and four foot high cool seam, so most of us are pretty big men. I'm probably the tallest on the crew, and you basically crawl or duck walk down a half a mile out of this tunnel.

One hour has elapsed. As the men crawled along the cramped tunnel, the water began to rise. It was up to our chins that we actually had our heads up in the air, trying to get your mouth up as high as you could. We're trying to get out as fast as we possibly can and we got down at one point where the water was roofed out. And at this point we had to turn around and try to fight our way back through the water. Three hours have elapsed.

With the tunnel flooded and the water still rising, there was no way to escape. We headed back to where we started from because that is the only place that we had left that we could go. So we... walked or crawled back up to this section where we was working, and at that point in time, someone made the suggestion that we look for Mo. Flathead Phillipy found Mo, yelled for all of us to come, and we could see him across the raging water on the other side.

At this point in time, our boss, Randy Fogel, told me to go get the scoop, which is basically an underground backhoe. It has four wheels on it and a 10 or 12 foot wide bucket. Randy Fogle got in the scoop and he started driving it in the water. We're very concerned because we knew this was very, very dangerous. He got it finally close enough where Mo...

jumped into the scoop bucket, and they pulled him across the water. We're all just jumping up and down. We're hugging him and crying. Some of us crying. I mean, he thought he was going to die by himself.

He could see the concern on her face is like, what's wrong? And at this time, we told him that we couldn't get out of the mine, that we tried every possible way and that we're stuck. When we knew we wasn't getting out, our boss Randy Fogle said, let's start building walls around us that we were going to barricade ourselves in. When you work in underground mining, barricading yourself in a place is the last resort. Basically, you're building your tomb. Six hours have elapsed.

When we started building barricades, we knew we had to seal off all these tunnel entries to try to keep the water from coming up any farther on us. We calculated, we knew we had anywhere from six to eight hours at this time before the water would reach us. On the surface, rescuers urgently drilled through the rock to try to locate the missing men. As the rising water surged into the ventilation shafts, the miners began suffocating. But we was actually running out of oxygen.

gasping for air, even when we wasn't doing nothing, it was very, very hard to breathe. I puked several times. Some other people did. We were gagging. It was like you ran a sprint. and he was trying to catch your breath, but you could just be sitting there. It just felt like there was pressure on your chest the whole time. Eight hours have elapsed. The six-inch drill broke through the roof of the chamber. And we started beating on the drill.

to let them know that we was alive. We actually beat on the steel nine times to let them know that nine guys were down here. Realizing the men had no air, rescuers began to pump oxygen down the shaft. It was within 15, 30 minutes that you could actually feel, you were starting to feel better already that you could breathe oxygen. The oxygen created an air pocket, but the water continued to rise.

We had one wall to build and the water was still rising. We got to this last wall. We got probably a quarter of the wall up and the water started coming in and starting to push the block down that we're stacking up. We knew we had an hour and a half to go. And we knew it was the end of the line now. Ten hours have elapsed. They know they only have an hour before the water engulfs them.

I was thinking about my family and kids, my parents, and the whole time. I asked Randy Fogle for a pen. I knew time was near. I wanted to write to my wife and kids because of the...

Most important things in my life and I wanted to tell them That I loved them and that don't worry about me that everything will be alright Every other guy they wrote to their wife and kids and we all cried we knew it was time we had an hour left i mean and we all stuck our letters in a plastic bucket and taped it shut so the water wouldn't get in so they

could at least give them to our families. Blaine's father-in-law was trapped with him in the mine. When me and my father-in-law was writing letters and put them in the bucket, we talked to each other and hugged each other, told them that we loved each other.

My wife, she was going to lose me plus her dad. She was going to lose two men in her life, so I knew it was going to be very, very hard. My father-in-law got some rope or wire cable, and he asked, If we wanted to tie ourselves together, he figured instead of our bodies floating all through the mines, that at least if we stuck together, they'd find us all without having to search us through the mud and coal.

Probably four or five of us did tie ourselves together. I was one of them. I didn't want my body floating all through the mines. I asked one of the miners, John Unger, if I was going to go to heaven. I said I was never baptized. And John said, you was a good person, Blaine. I believe that you will go to heaven. When the water was coming in, you didn't know how it... One guy said, when it gets up so high, I'm just going to dive into the water and swim as long as I can.

until I run out of air. How do you sit there and how are you going to die with dignity with eight or nine guys? That's all in one little area. You're going to watch everybody drown. Twelve hours have elapsed. The water is now lapping just feet away from the chamber entrance. We even put a piece of canvas across that entry because we didn't even want to see the water rising. It just gave you a little barrier.

And we waited and waited and waited. Here the water stopped about right where this curtain was. It went an hour. It was still there. It went eight, ten hours. It was still there. It never rose. It wasn't really dropping. So we sat in this entry pretty much in pitch dark. 24 hours have elapsed. Rescuers were pumping water from the mine at a rate of 20,000 gallons a minute.

The water was dropping maybe a foot every two hours. It was taking a long time. We wasn't walking out. The only way that we was getting out, they was going to have to drill a hole and come down and get us. You didn't know if it was night, day, so we was trying to keep up the best that we could. We sat in this entry pretty much in pitch dark. Most of our batteries were dead.

We talked the whole time we was down there. Some guys tried to sleep and we hugged each other, we cuddled each other, we leaned back to back against each other. Anything we could do to try to keep ourselves as warm as possible. At one point in time, my father-in-law and another guy found a bucket floating in the water, and there was a corned beef sandwich, I believe, in it, and a Mountain Dew.

Well, there was nine of us there in one sandwich, so they were starting to cut little chunks up. And I mean, they were just inch by inch squares. And I was like, nah, I said, give mine to someone else. I said, that ain't even going to get me started. 48 hours have elapsed. You tried to do the best you could at this time. Basically, it was two and a half to three days, well, two and a half days that we were sitting in this little 30 by 50 room.

The whole time, I was so miserable. My body ached. I was cold. I could never get comfortable, and I know everybody else was the same. We could hear it very faintly up above. We knew that they was trying to drill a big drill down to rescue us. They didn't know we was alive, but they was drilling the hole regardless of whether it was a rescue or a recovery.

73 hours have elapsed. The men took turns to leave the chamber and check the falling water level. My father-in-law and Hound Dog was actually checking the water level walking around when... They heard the drill bit break through in behind a wall. So they come up to the section and Hound Dog said, do you guys want to go home? And I think I replied, what the hell do you mean you wanted to go home?

He said they punched through. That's when I undid my mining belt, dropped it down on the ground, and I left it there because I knew I was never coming back. A specialist rescue team had drilled a 250-foot escape shaft down to the trapped men. The nine miners had been entombed in the flooded mine for 77 hours. They sent down a communicator so we could talk to him, a microphone. They're like, do you guys all right? Do you need anything?

and there was three requests. Chewing snuff was the first request, beer was the second, and food was the third. So they did send snuff down and food, they didn't send the beer down. They called down on the microphone and told us that they was going to send this capsule down, that it had a slide door on the bottom that you had to slide up and you had to crawl your body into this tube, a cylinder.

It got a wire mesh around it, and it had a headset in it so they could talk to you as they raised you up. It felt like an hour to get up, which I think it only took three to five minutes. You could see the layers of the rock as you're going up. And as you got closer to the top and almost ready to pop out of the hole, you could just hear the people cheering, the roars. And when you did pop out, the lights were everywhere. We had no clue that the world was watching this horror deal.

We thought maybe 10, 20, 30 people might be up, and I'm telling you, it was hundreds and hundreds of people up. At that point in time is when I really, really broke down. I mean, I just started crying. I knew what I went through. It was just unbelievable. They brought me to the Somerset Hospital, and my wife and kids were there, and it was very emotional, but very good to see them. Blaine has never returned to work in the mine.

I survived because somebody else wanted me to survive. Too many things happened for a reason at the right time, I believe. We got oxygen to us in time. We got... found mow in time, the water stopped in time. There had to be a higher power, I still believe.

It's June 2009 in Nashville, Tennessee. 25-year-old student Lynn Coya shares an apartment with three roommates. In the evenings, he goes to night school classes. I got to my house about 1045. When I got there, I noticed that none of my roommate's cars were there. I mean, somebody's usually there. When I get home that late, the way our driveway is, you have to pull around the back of the house, and it's kind of dark back there. The only light back there is the porch light.

And I walked to the door, and as I unlocked the door, my hair kind of stood up. I kind of had a weird feeling. I walked up to my room, and I got my gun and just kind of checked the whole house. I've always been around guns my whole life. My whole family's owned them, been proud gun owners. Lincoya kept the registered pistol in his room. I made sure all the doors were locked and nobody was in the house. I actually sat down and put a DVD in.

and I was watching a movie and I had the gun on the recliner arm. I was about an hour and a half into the movie and I got a phone call from my roommate and he said that he didn't have his key and for me to come unlock the door. So when I stood up, I actually took two steps towards the door and I thought, well, I don't want to leave my gun just laying out in the open, you know, while I'm here alone. That's all right, but not when my roommates are there. So I turned around and I...

I grabbed my pistol and I just slid it in my back pocket just to run down there and unlock the door for him. As I walked downstairs, the back porch light was on, and as I unlocked the door, I noticed two guns come over his shoulders. Two masked men were behind his roommate, armed with guns. One was a shotgun and the other was a semi-automatic pistol. And the guns got kind of put in my face.

I thought it maybe was a joke at first. I remember putting my hand on the end of the shotgun and kind of pushing it away. And at that time, the other guy with the gun kind of put it in my neck and told me.

It's not a game to get down on the ground. My shirt was a little bit larger, so I just kind of slid my shirt over it to conceal the weapon a little better. When I glanced at my roommate, I noticed that he was definitely in a... a shock state he looked like he's seen a ghost and that kind of it kind of made me panic a little more i didn't doubt a bit that they would have shot me instantly if i didn't do one thing they said

Felt like they were full of hate. They forced us into the living room and had us sit down on the couch. And as one of them watched us, the other one kind of ran through the house and... I guess just scoping out what was in each room. The guy that was looking around proceeded to come back into the living room and told me to stand up and get off the couch and forced me around the house and made me

collect items and bring them back into the living room. I thought about pulling the gun out of my pocket, but I was always told that if I'm in a bad situation, I don't need to panic or I might make a bad mistake. So I needed to calm down before I made a decision like it. He was actually in my room and he found a box of bullets. He started yelling and was kind of, his demeanor got more aggressive.

He told me, you know, where's the gun at? Show me where the gun is. He actually had the shotgun in my back. He was pressing pretty hard. I felt like the devil was in my house that night. And I told him that it was one of my roommates that wasn't there.

and that maybe he had it with him, and he's on a road trip. I convinced him that the gun was not in the house, and he made me go into the kitchen and collect the garbage bags. And then he started, he told me to proceed to put the items in the garbage bags.

The gunman tell Lin Koya and his roommate that they intend to tie them up. The guy with the shotgun sat down on the couch beside me. So I'm sitting on the left end of the couch. He's sitting on the right end of the couch with the gun pointed towards me. One of the gunmen started grabbing the garbage bags full of our items and taking them downstairs. And as he's walking down the stairs, the guy sitting on the couch with me, he said, you know what we're going to do after we tie you up, don't you?

At this point, I knew my gun was in my back pocket. I either had to get to it or I had to get this gun away from this guy. And I immediately grabbed the barrel of his gun and jumped up and started trying to yank it from him. Me and him both have our hands on the weapon, and we're kind of doing a tug-of-war thing for the gun. About that time, I heard a loud bang. I 100% knew that I was hit. I knew it was close range.

And I knew that it wasn't good. There was a really deep gash in my thigh that split open. I mean, I could see my bone. Where the blood was coming out, I mean, to best describe it, it was like a volcano that was erupted. And I knew that he was going to have to take a few seconds to try to re-cock the gun, so I had ample time to grab my weapon. The first time I fired, I just kind of wildly fired, but I knew that it was...

I knew it was towards his head. I didn't know at that point, I didn't know if I hit him or not. I remember kind of refocusing and taking a better aim and then firing again. I knew at that point I hit him. I stand up off the couch, and as I do, my leg buckles under me. When I landed on the ground, after flipping over the edge of the couch, he ended up laying there right beside me. I remember he was making the...

The worst sound I've ever heard in my life. His roommate grabbed the shotgun from the man Lincoya had shot. He's standing at the other side of the steps. And we both got our guns pointed down the steps, waiting on this other guy to come up. I'm kind of accepting the fact that this is it. I mean, I'm sure I'm bleeding enough to die. So as I'm sitting there, I kind of felt a comforting feeling kind of come over me.

I just felt like the presence of, I felt like I had angels. I mean, my father passed away about five years before this happened. I felt his presence. A few seconds went by and I heard the back door shut. I knew that the other guy was coming in. And he stuck his head around the stairway. I just remember yelling and firing my weapon down. down the steps, and he immediately took off running. I actually started looking at my wound. I noticed it was at least seven to eight inches.

Every time I felt my heart beat, I know more blood was coming out. The pain was sitting at this point. It's by far the worst pain I've ever been in my life. My roommate's on the phone with the police. My roommate tells me to put my gun down, that the police are here. When the EMTs got there, a couple of them were tending to me and were patching up my leg.

Other EMTs were working on the man Lincoya had shot. I remember one of them saying, DLA, and I know exactly what that meant. Hearing those three letters hurt worse than the gunshot initially. It was obvious. It was self-defense, but knowing that you took a human life is by far the worst feeling that I've ever experienced. I relive that moment every night.

Lincoya required two surgeries to repair the damage from the shotgun blast. The 21-year-old man who had shot Lincoya died at the scene. His 17-year-old accomplice was arrested later that night. He was charged with attempted criminal homicide, aggravated assault, and robbery. I survived because I had a firearm with me that night. If I didn't have that gun that night, I wouldn't be alive right now.

My roommate wouldn't be alive right now. I felt like I had angels around me that night. Definitely somebody upstairs had their hand on me.