I Survived: Abducted by a Church Handyman - Full Episode (S5, E5) | A&E

i heard a loud bang i knew i was hit i knew it  was close range and i knew that it it wasn't good we knew we had to get out right away that  this mine's going to fill up with water quick and then he pulled my head up and then he  took that knife and just sawed back and forth you're gonna watch everybody drown we  knew it was time we had an hour left i come in about eight o'clock  every morning i stay until four   i take requests for prayer for people wherever  they happen to be or whatever their problem is the man randall mitchell asked us to call him  mitch he came applying for a job at our church   as a as a painter the fella 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 and did some work on a wooden   and i paid him and that was  that was the end of that so the administrator questioned i suppose  he questioned the 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  it was about two weeks after the money was missing   that he came to my front door  this was on sunday afternoon 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 i handed the keys to him and when  he got the keys and he just his   eyes narrowed and he says i'm going to kill you i said what do you what do you  mean what are you talking about he wasn't laughing or anything like  that he says i'm going to kill you so 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 mouth deep inside  the ground and 250 feet below the surface level it was probably an hour hour and a half  left on our shift until he's 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 it was a roar that i never heard before  and 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 had 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's 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's that much that it's not even  touching these sections it's just blown right by   them and as it's slowing its pace of speed that's  when it starts diverting its water everywhere 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   no poppernack was on the other side of the 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 i got to my house about 10 45 when i got there i  noticed that none of my roommate's cars were there   i mean usually somebody's usually  there when i get home that like   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 and my  whole family's owned them been proud gun owners 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   he didn't have his key and for me to come unlock  the door so uh 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 turn around and i grab 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 uh the back porch light was on and   as i unlocked the door i noticed  two guns come over his shoulders one was a shotgun and the other was a  semi-automatic pistol and uh they 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   the end of the shotgun and kind of pushing it  away and at that time the 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 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  and 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  to run from him or get away from him   it's it's a bad situation he showed  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 hand 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   and he did he hit me four times he hit me hard and  i was the blood flowed it froze 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 they reached in the closet and he got a belt  and he tied my ankles together i had no idea   was gonna but i certainly wasn't ready  for it and i didn't want it to happen um   he just wanted jewelry he wanted money to kill me we tried to get mark paupernack out at first  and we seen that it was a losing battle so   we knew we had to get out right away we  knew we had to go roughly a half a mile   in four foot high cool seams 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 it was up to our chins  that we actually had our heads um   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   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 moe flathead philippe 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 fogle told  me to go get the scoop which is basically uh   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 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 that at this time we told him   that we couldn't get out of the mind 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 was going to barricade  ourselves in when you work at an underground   mining barricading yourself in a place is the last  resort it's basically you're building your tomb my shirt was a little bit larger so  i just kind of slid my shirt over   to conceal the weapon a little a little better  uh when i glanced at my roommate i noticed that   he was he was definitely in 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 full of hate   they forced us into the living room  and uh had to 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 uh   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 him back into the  living room i thought about pulling the gun out   of my pocket but i was always told that if i if  i'm in a bad situation i don't need a panic or i   might make a bad mistake and i so i needed to  calm down before i made a decision like that he was actually in my room  and he found a box of bullets   he started yelling him and was kind of his  demeanor got more aggressive and he 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 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 truck   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 added and so when  he got in the car and he and he started out   i tried to decide how 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 he had already said he was going to kill me  so i 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 pray 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 i was so cold there was um   i felt around in the and 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 and and   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  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 um   the trunk of the car i saw he had a  knife and he was ready to plunge into my chest 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 but we was actually running out  of oxygen we were 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 you 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 when we started beating on the drill  to let them know that we was alive   we actually beat on the still nine times to  let them know that nine guys were down here   it was within 15 30 minutes  that you could actually feel   you were starting to feel better  already that you could breathe oxygen 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 it's 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 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 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   but as he's walking down the stairs the guy was  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 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 i was hit i knew it was close range   and i knew that it it wasn't good there  was a really deep gash in my 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 i saw he had a knife and he was ready  to plunge into my chest i fought for the   knife it's a serrated kind of knife and so as  i struggle 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 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 it there was a cracking sound   and i thought i went limp i thought that he  had broken my neck and he thought that too 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 nobody 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 why is it taking so long 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 they're 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 all right and i wrote to my wife and kids 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 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 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 the two men two-minute inner 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 he 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 i'm just go when it gets   up so high i'm just gonna dive into the water  and swim as long as i can until i run out of air   how do you how do you sit there and how are you  gonna die with dignity with eight or nine guys   that's all in one little area  you're gonna watch everybody drown and i knew that he was going to  have to take a few seconds to try to   recock 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 remember he was making the worst  sound i've ever heard in my life 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 as i'm sitting there i kind of felt a   i felt a comforting feeling kind of come over me it 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 the other guy was coming in i spent a lot of time thinking and praying  because there wasn't anything else there to do and   i i just was sure i was going to die i  was coming to the end of my resources i heard a woman's voice so i knew that 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 a  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 put they cover me up oh you just don't  know how warm that blanket felt it was so so warm we even put a piece of canvas across that entry  because we didn't 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 the water was dropping maybe a foot every two  hours it was taking a long time we wasn't walking   out and the only way that we was getting out there  was going to have to drill a hole and come down   and get us even 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 find found a bucket floating   in the water and there was a corned beef  sandwich i believe in it and uh mountain dew   well there was nine of us there and one sandwich  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 gonna get me started you tried to do the best you could at this  time and 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 see or to rescue us they didn't   know he was alive but they was drilling the  hole regardless to whether it was a rescue or a recovery my father-in-law and um hound dog was actually  checking the water level walking around when   they heard the drill bit break  through in behind the wall   so they come up to the section man hound  dog said do you guys want to get 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 few seconds went by and i heard the back  door shut i knew the other guy was coming in and he he stuck his head around the stairway   i just remember yelling and firing  my weapon down down the steps and uh he immediately took off running i actually started looking at my  wound i noticed it was it was at least   seven to eight inches long every time i  felt my heartbeat i 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 and  my roommate tells me to put my gun down that   that uh the police are here when the emts got there they uh a couple  of them were attending to me and uh were patching up my leg i remember one of them  saying uh doa and i know exactly what they 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 every night 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   had angels around me that night uh definitely  somebody upstairs had their hand on me they sent down a communicator so  we could talk to him a microphone   they're like you guys all right then he's need  anything 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 um   food they didn't they didn't send a beer down  though 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 that  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 close 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 or deal we   thought maybe 10 20 30 people might be up and i'm  telling you it was hundreds and hundreds of people at that point in time is when i really really  broke down i mean i just started crying i knew   what i went through and 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 him i survived because somebody else  wanted me to survive too many things   happen for a reason at the right time i  believe we got oxygen to us in time we got   found mowing time the water stopped in  time there had to be a higher power i still believe 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   uh stitches in it then my  scalp they had to staple that   practically all of my fingers have been either  they've been um 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 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 in  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 maybe it's because of the life that i've that  i've lived and i know that you can't live with   anger and bitterness and hatred it  just won't work god 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 you

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Keywords: a&e, aetv, a&e tv, ae, a&e television, a&e shows, a+e, the first 48, crime, true crime, crime investigation, solving crime, police, detectives, attorneys, police procedure, cold case, first 48, live PD, 60 days in, swat, swat team, narcotics, prison, I Survived season 5 episode 5, I Survived 5x5, I Survived season 05, I Survived s5 e5, watch I Survivedclips, I Survived new clips, season 5, Abducted by a Church Handyman, I Survived full, i survived full episodes, full episode clips

Id: gijrlAY2zRs

Length: 45min 5sec (2705 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 08 2021