WASHINGTON — Monday morning, Feb. 23, 2015, started off routinely for Reverend Phyllis Sortor. But everything went downhill quickly in Emiworo, Kogi State, Nigeria.
After a morning meeting with a chief of a nearby village, Sortor returned to Hope Academy, a secondary school sponsored by the U.S.-based Free Methodist Church organization. The 71-year-old worked as an administrator at the campus.
What happened next seemed surreal to her.
While standing in front of the Free Methodist Church, talking to other staff members, “all of a sudden gunshots rang out from in front of me and behind me, and masked gunmen were running from every direction toward us. They came straight for me,” Sortor said in an exclusive interview with her pastor, the Rev. Blake Wood, at the First Free Methodist Church in Seattle, Washington.
WTOP made numerous requests for interviews with Sortor. She and the church declined, but granted WTOP use of the interview with Wood for the purpose of telling her story.
The gunmen “began dragging me across the compound to the right to where there is pretty low wall,” Sortor said.
Still not clear what was happening to her, one of the attackers confirmed she was facing a dire situation.
“The first thing that one gunman said was ‘Today is the day you die,’” Sortor said. It was then that someone struck her across her face twice.
The kidnappers brutally and rapidly hustled her out of the compound. In the process, she lost her cellphone and one of her shoes.
The loss of her shoe would later save her life.
Roughly yanked and pulled through the thick forest, and forced to run for miles with one shoe, she finally collapsed, begging for water.
“One of the men gave me a bottle of water and I took a drink. Just one drink was all he would give me, and he poured water on my head, which cooled me down,” Sortor said.
The respite lasted only a moment as she was again forced to her feet to continue running. But during that moment, she made the life-saving connection with one of the kidnappers, who told her his name was Ismaila.
He took off one of his shoes and gave it to her. It was a moment of kindness that changed quickly to despair on Sortor’s part when Ismaila informed her a “moto” (a vehicle) was waiting on the other side of the forest.
“I thought to myself, a moto, a car, is waiting for us, and it struck me for the first time that I’d been kidnapped. And that there was a car waiting for me and that meant I was going to be taken somewhere, maybe far away out of the state,” Sortor said.
As she retold the story to Wood, her voice rose, reflecting the terror she felt when she realized what was happening.
“This terrible fear just cut through me. I was really afraid and I just kept praying. ‘God save me, save me, save me,’” Sortor said.
She was eventually disguised by Ismaila, put on a motorbike and whisked miles away to a deep ravine where she was finally allowed to get off the bike.
“I just fell down on the ground because I was just so exhausted. My stomach was lurching from exhaustion and fear, and I just threw up and I instantly fell asleep.”
Sortor said she woke up hours later as darkness crept in.
“Lying on my face in the dirt and in my vomit, covered with leaves and sticks and dirt, I saw myself like the kidnappers must have seen me — weak, pathetic and cringing like a beaten dog.”
At that moment she decided to go into survival mode.
“It was then that I realized that if I was ever going to get out of this situation, I was going to have to take control of myself.”
After cleaning herself up as best she could with a scarf she managed to keep after being abducted, she attempted to escape. Seeing no one around her and hearing signs of life in the distance, she deduced her kidnappers had made the mistake of leaving her alone.
“I took one step and was immediately surrounded by kidnappers,” Sortor said.
Later that evening, she had another encounter with Ismaila, who earlier threatened to kill her. But the connection made when he gave her his shoe proved to be a turning point in his thinking.
“Ismaila was a criminal, but he was a gentleman. He established himself as my protector from very early on. Remember, he had taken off one of his shoes and [given] me his shoe to wear. He also didn’t hit me when I asked him his name. That surprised me,” Sortor said.
During a conversation that first night after she was kidnapped, he told her he had decided not to kill her, because she reminded him of his mother. He even agreed to let her escape, but he warned her other kidnappers would never allow that.
In fact, during the rest of her captivity, “the men under Ismaila’s command became very violent and very angry, and they tried to kill me several times,” Sortor said.
Each time, she said Ismaila, would insert himself between her and his men, and inform them they would have to kill him before killing her.
After 12 days of attempts on her life, emotional turmoil, constant moving around and sleeping in the woods, word came she would be released.
On the morning of Friday, March 6, the wheels of her release process started slowly turning.
“Ismaila came running down the path to my rabbit-hole (what she called the small ravine where she was held) saying, ‘Thank God, thank God. You’re going to be released.’ And I was so thankful too,” Sortor said.
In the early evening, she was once again disguised and placed on a moto with Ismaila and driven to the outskirts of the town of Ajaokuta.
“They took me right up to the edge of town, right up to the pavement, and there Ismaila told me to get down (off the bike),” Sortor said.
He returned her cellphone to her, which she thought had been lost, and 12,000 naira, the equivalent of $12 in the U.S., and told her to take a taxi home.
His last words to her before disappearing into the darkness were “Don’t worry, Mommy,” which he had begun calling her during captivity.
Sortor began walking toward lights she could see in the distance. Within minutes, she saw a man approaching.
“So I went up to him and I greeted him. And I said, ‘Please, can you please show me where the main road is?’”
The man studied her for a moment and became very excited.
“He grabbed my hand and started shaking my hand saying, ‘Congratulations, congratulations. I recognize you. We’ve been praying for you.’”
The man took her to the local church, the police were called, and she was eventually re-united with her colleagues and U.S. officials.
It’s not clear what led to her release or why she was kidnapped in the first place.
Unconfirmed reports indicate a ransom was paid to the kidnappers, as is often the case in kidnappings in that region. They were originally said to have asked for $300,000, but later allegedly agreed to accept much less. However, in a statement provided to WTOP, the church said, “The Free Methodist Church, according to its policies, did not pay any ransom to the hostage takers for Rev. Sortor’s release.”
It’s also not clear what happened to the kidnappers.
But because of the extraordinary bond between herself and Ismaila, Sortor said, “I didn’t want him to be caught and, to this day, I pray that he won’t be.”
The ordeal will have a lasting impact on her and it has already taken a toll on the work she did.
“In the wake of Rev. Sortor’s kidnapping and release, the Free Methodist Church is transitioning its work in Nigeria completely into Nigerian hands,” the church said in a statement.
Sortor is reportedly back in Nigeria. The church says, “Rev. Sortor is assisting in the completion of our transition plan, but — for her safety — we cannot speak to where she is.”
