Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: I Felt Like It Went From A Color Day To A Black And White Day

Episode Date: October 4, 2025

Philip is a missionary working in Haiti when he is ambushed, shot and held for ransom by a gang. Karen finds out her husband has been living a double life. After confronting and kicking him out, he breaks in and viciously assaults her. Tunneler Ali returns to an underground shaft minutes after escaping to rescue Kenny and another colleague from the flooded cavity.Crimes Of: Check them out HERE or wherever you listenProgressive: Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Your first great love story is free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.ca slash Wondery. That's audible.com.C.A. slash Wondery. Hi, I Survived listeners. I'm Marissa Pinson. And before we get into this week's episode, I just want to remind you that episodes of I Survived as well as the A&E Classic podcast's cold case files, city confidential, and American justice are all available ad-free on the new A&E Crime and Investigation channel on Apple Podcast and Apple Plus. just $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year. And now onto the show. This episode contains subject

matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. To me, it felt like it went from a color day to a black and white day that I was driving into no man's land and I was dead. Real people. When they saw me, it's almost like they saw a ghost because they expecting three people and there's only one. Who faced death. He was sort of poking me with that knife and talking to me the whole time. And I remember thinking, I'm going to die.

And live to tell how. The minute that gunfire hit me, I just knew that chances were pretty good that I was leaning towards dying that day more than anything else. This is I survived. It's 2001 in Port-au-Prince Haiti. Philip, a missionary, runs a non-profit charity.

He organizes building materials, food, and clothing for Haitians in need. I founded an organization that gleanes resources in the United States and channels them into the Haitian churches to help the Haitian pastors develop their own programs. Philip was about to drive to Port-a-Prince with five-year-old Shelton and his father. Shelton, a local boy, had an eye injury and needed a visa to get treatment in America. That morning, I woke up early and Shelton, his father, and I jumped in the Ford Ranger. Our intent was just to run into Port-au-Prince. It was about a 40, 50-mile trip. Get in there, get his visa, so I could bring him home to United States for surgery on his eye.

We had got into the outskirts of Port-au-Prince near airport road. There was a UN checkpoint. I was pulled over. My license was checked. The UN soldiers were in Haiti to keep peace among warring political factions. Several miles past the checkpoint, Philip approached a shanty town. I'm driving 45 miles an hour, 50 miles an hour. The roads are clear.

And I glance back. I see movement on both sides of the vehicle. and a little boy out in the middle of the road who had just chucked a rock at the windshield. In that instant that I saw the rock and ducked, gunfire broke out all around the car. The movement I saw in my peripheral vision were gunmen and it was a 12-gauge shotgun,

just a foot off of this side of the car that blasted through the driver's side window. window, there were a number of guns on that side of the car. Bullets came through the windshield. And that was just a boom, boom, boom, boom. The minute that gunfire hit me, and I felt that shot hit me, I knew, I just knew that chances were pretty good that I was leaning towards dying that day more than anything else. I was shot, I'd felt something hit me, I was shot pretty bad, and I'm thinking,

options, options, options, what's next? All I could think of was get the truck stop, get your hands up, and get out on your own two feet. Maybe you'll have a chance. And I was immediately mobbed, I mean, mobbed, seriously mobbed by 20, 25 people. They just all grabbed me, hands in every one of my pockets, moving me around the back of the truck towards the sidewalk.

One guy just ripped my shirt off. Most of the hands are now in my wallet pocket, trying to get my wallet out. They're fighting from my wallet. I mean, that's the treasure chest, as far as they're concerned. I got it pulled out, and the minute that thing hit the air, man, they grabbed that, and they were all gone. Everybody disappeared.

And it was so crazy because it was just like everybody around was going about their business, their daily business, the shoe shine, boy. The lady with the basket of charcoal on her head, Somebody walking by with a donkey? The young boy Shelton and his father also disappeared, leaving Philip alone. I'm looking at myself, my arm is just hamburger,

and I got bullet holes in my chest, and I'm a mess. There was blood pouring off all five of my fingers. I had two holes in my chest where large buckshot or something hit me, and I had rivers of blood going down my stomach. But this time, I just felt like, wow, this is it, buddy. You are in the crap now. And, you know, that's like I said, it just, to me, it felt like it went from a color day to a black and white day that I was driving into no man's land, and I was dead.

And I had rivers of blood going down my stomach. My first concern was I have to get somewhere and get this patched up. now. A group of young men, and they were probably between the ages of 16 and 22, six or seven of them, kind of stuck their head around the corner, and they said, what's you going to do? What's you going to do? And I said, I need help, man. That's all I know. I need help. I'm bleeding. The young man took Philip to a house deep in the slum to treat his wounds. Three Red Cross workers, Haitian Red Cross workers walked in. Two women and a man dressed in, dressed nicely in the Red Cross uniforms with their stuff.

And they went right to work. I mean, no monkey business at all. They couldn't talk to me. They weren't allowed to say anything. I greeted them. They didn't greet me back. Just about the time the Red Cross was leaving, somebody brought Shelton down. Shelton was the five-year-old boy who urgently needed eye surgery in America.

Philip was driving Shelton to Porta Prince to get a visa when they were ambushed. They just brought him in and gave him to me and we were reunited. So at this point, it was he and I. It was only minutes then that the people who had brought me there suggested that we go for another little walk. For the most part, you know, they're ignoring me

or they're just making fun, you know. This is a game to them. It's my life, but it's a game to them. They took me from there, and we started marching back through this ghetto area. Philip and Shelton were delivered to an armed gang and taken hostage. We were met about halfway up

by a pretty rugged-looking group of people carrying arms, AKs, and 9mm, machetes, machetes, you know, about a half a dozen of them. Pretty rough-looking characters. You know, at this point, it's pretty interesting when you're that close to death. You know, there's not a whole lot in the world that you want besides just to be able to look into somebody's eyes

and connect. You know, I'm feeling like, man, this could be my last couple hours on Earth. They parked us in a house. in a house. It was a little room about 15 by 15 and they took me in there and they started talking. The main man who was my new host started talking and asking me about who I was and this and that and he eventually gave me a telephone and said call somebody. Call somebody You know, we're going to hold you for ransom, and we're going to ask $300,000 for your release.

So call somebody. Philip phoned his son Chad, who worked for his charity in Haiti. So I called him, and I said, man, you're not going to believe this. You've got to do something. You're the man on the outside. Philip's son called the U.S. embassy to help him assemble a negotiating team. It was comprised of Haitian police and a private negotiator. When my final host, you know, informed me that he was going to ask $300,000 for my release,

I really just sort of laughed at him to begin with. And, you know, I tried to explain to him, look, man, how are you going to get $300,000 for a missionary? You know, and then I went on to tell him, you know, I don't have money in the bank. I don't, I, I'm not a tourist. I'm not a businessman. I'm not down here for the sex trades. I'm not down here fishing. I'm a missionary.

Everything I do is about giving what I have or what I can get together, giving it to your people. The authorities were convinced the kidnappers would kill Philip after the ransom was paid, but Chad was confident his father could survive. So Chad and his team came together and started doing negotiations. In the meantime, I'm still in the room. By 5 p.m., the negotiations had stalled, and the kidnappers began to torment them.

My new host, you know, he's the kind of guy that you know, if he wanted to, he could kill you. And I'm just like that. He carried a 9mm. But his buddy, Trashmouth, that guy was. was just brutal. He's the one that would heckle me, you know, over and over again. I'm gonna kill you, I'm gonna cut your hat off. You know, by morning you're gonna be dead.

I don't care what this guy does, I'm gonna kill you. You know, I looked him in the eye and I said to him, I said, I would be afraid of that. But I'm a missionary, and I believe with all my heart that the only reason I'm here, you didn't bring me here. The only reason I'm really here is that God has me here, and he has me here for a reason. You can threaten to kill me.

In fact, you can kill me. But I choose to love you. Whatever happens, I choose to love you. And if you kill me, I will forgive you. For the first time in my life, I'm realizing that, you know, I could be martyred. The negotiations continued through the day. Maybe I talked to Chad maybe four times that day.

And every time I would talk to him, you know, would hang up the phone. My host would do his thing. You know, they're still not offering it. You're never going to get out of this. And, you know, it came to one point late in the afternoon where Chad, you know, I'm starting to get on him, man. What is wrong with you people out there?

And he's finally telling me, he said, listen, Dad, you just have to trust me. And he said that about three or four times. And finally a light came on and I said, okay, all right, I'll trust you. A ransom of $3,000 was agreed upon, but too late for the exchange to be made that day. I was really getting bummed out when I noticed the sun was going down and I was going to be stuck there all night and probably the worst night of my life

that place is scary after dark at nighttime shooting would often erupt sometime probably close to 11 or 12 o'clock at night just all hell broke loose just all of a sudden it's like the whole slum

just erupted in gunfire. Every caliber of gun, you can imagine, firing out for minutes, I mean, thousands of rounds. And then within minutes, a whole other volley of gunfire would erupt from the UN camp that was a quarter of a mile away. And they're throwing lead back into the slum. All their guns, damn 16s,

and the thumping 50 calibers, just round after round after round and then that would stop and it'd be quiet for a while and then you know just when you're starting to relax the slum would erupt in gunfire and it went back and forth like this about six or seven times and then it stopped you know and we're tentatively wondering what's going to happen next you know is somebody coming in to rescue us or what's going on here? By late morning, the kidnappers brought a community leader to the shack. He came up and he started talking to me in nearly perfect English.

And it just started a conversation like we met at the grocery store or something. Hey, how you doing? I hear your name is Philip. So, you know, and he started to tell me a little bit about himself and that he had worked for a particular institution in Haiti. that was a nonprofit, sort of a benevolent organization. And that's when I started to talk to him. You know, he finally took a moment.

I started to tell him about my family and, you know. He says, Philip, will you drink with me? And I said, yeah, sure. So he uncorked a ballerome, took a big hit on it, handed it to me. I hit on it and handed it back to him. And he said, you're free. He said, we got you free.

You know, we've made the deal, and you're out of here. I said, you're serious? Are you serious? Yeah, you're free. Somebody unlocked this door. And they unlocked the door, and I said, wow. I stepped outside. I said, well, let's go.

Philip and Shelton flew to America for Shelton's eye surgery. Philip's son, Chad, has now returned to America. Philip still suffers from his injuries, but continues his charity work in Haiti. Bottom line is the people. They're fantastic people. They're just full of love, full energy, full of joy, and they're amazing. Even in poverty, these people come through with just such pure joy and such a love for living. I believe that I survived because God's hand is on my life, and it would bring him more glory for me to survive than it would have brought for me to die.

Hey there, it's Marissa. If you're loving I Survived, you need to check out Crimes of, the newest show from Crime House Studios, hosted by Sabrina Deanna Roga and Corinne Vienne of two girls, one ghost. Crimes of is a weekly true crime anthology series that explores a new theme each season, from crimes of the paranormal, unsolved murders, mysterious disappearances, and more. For their first season, Sabrina and Corinne are diving into Crimes of Infamy, the real-life events behind Hollywood's most iconic horror villains, from cult classics to massive franchises.

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He had sort of kind of like an edge to him. There was something attractive about the bad boy, but not quite the bad boy. He was spontaneous. He just liked life. And I said, oh, this was kind of nice. Even though my friends, when they first met him, were cautious, I think. But friends are supposed to be cautious. about you, that eventually they got to like him.

So he was very easy to get along with. Karen was married to Ron for four years. It was about Father's Day, and we'd gotten up. We were planning to spend the day together. Actually, we were going to go out and visit his dad. And he said he was going to go by the Sunday morning paper. So we left the house, and about half an hour after he left the house, the phone rang. And I answered the phone, there was a woman on the phone, and she said, can I speak to Ron?

to Ron. And I said, I'm sorry, he's not home, but this is his wife. Can I take a message? And I remember she went something like, oh my God, I have to talk to you, and then she started to talk. And that's when I found out that this is a woman that he actually had a relationship even before we got married. As a matter of fact, this is kind of like a soap opera. But on our first blind date, she was in the hospital giving birth to their son. You can tell when another woman's not lying to you, because she just knew too many intimate details. She could describe my car.

She knew when my husband had erupted his Achilles tendon. So she knew a lot of things. So I just knew that she wasn't lying. Karen confronted Ron about the female caller. He got upset. First of all, I think that this woman called. He was yelling at me. He couldn't believe that I would believe her over him.

We argued for hours back and forth. And finally, it was about 8.30, and I figured, you know, this is enough. I began to get a sense that if I pushed it any further, that something bad was going to happen, I just got a sense that he was going to hit me. Unknown to Karen, Ron had assaulted his previous partner. About 10 o'clock that same night, the phone rang. And it was this woman calling again. And her words to me were, are you okay?

And I said, yeah. and she said, did you tell Ron what I said? And I said, yeah. And she kept saying, are you okay? But I was trying to talk to her so that he kind of wouldn't know it was her on the phone because I didn't want the argument to start again.

So after a few minutes, I hung up the phone. And after hung up the phone, Ron turned toward me and he had this weird look in his eye and he said, oh, so now the two of you are plotting against me. She calls you up on the phone. You believe everything she says. So now it's you two against me.

And I'm kind of wondering what's he talking about. And he says, so I tell you what, I'm going to punch you in your face and I'm going to break your jaw. He said, then I want you to call her on the phone and tell her all about it. And I just very nonchalantly said to him, if you put your hands on me, it won't be her, I'll be calling. It'll be the police. And I meant it, but that's just what I said.

And he sort of chuckled, and he kind of turned away from me, and he turned toward the nightstand that was on the left side of the bed. And when he turned back to me, he had a knife in his hand. The knife had a brown wooden handle and a blade that was about six inches long, and it was jagging on the edge. And he stuck this knife right in front of my face. And that's when he started screaming at me, and he kept saying, who'd you say you were going to call?

Who'd you say you were going to call? And I just sort of stared at the knife, and I just remembered saying to my name, and I just said myself, don't say anything. If you don't say anything, he'll calm down. Then after a while, he closed the knife, and as he's turning away from me, I guess to put the knife back in the drawer. In my mind, I was thinking, okay, now you have to get out of here, but how are you going to do this? So I sort of eased my legs off the side of the bed, put my feet on the floor, and I just very casually turned to him and said, I'll be right back. I have to go to the bathroom. And I reached on the floor because my pocket was on the floor.

floor and I picked up my pocketbook. And when my feet hit the floor, the next thing I remember is I was running out the front door. I remember going down the stairs and out the front door, and I didn't stop running until I was two blocks away at the police station. Two days later, Karen returned home with the police. Her husband was upstairs. He was upstairs watching, of all things, the O.J. Simpson trial, because that was actually going on at this time. And I heard them talking to him, and a few minutes later he came down with like a duffel bag in his hand and he stopped at the bottom of stairs and he just stared at me with this like look of hatred and like my blood boiled the chill just thinking about it and then he walked out the door and off the police went and off he went and i kind of thought

that that was going to be the end of it Karen took legal action obtaining a restraining order which prevented Ron from returning home but two weeks later Ron broke into the apartment through a side window. So Saturday morning, I woke up, walked over to the bedroom door, opened the door. And when I opened the door, Ron was standing in the doorway. He was naked, except for a pair of green plaid boxer shorts. He had nothing else on. I think I just was like shock. And I just said, what are you doing here? You're not supposed to be here. That's when I think I started to get nervous. And that's when I noticed the knife and the ropes. All he said to me is, you're going to listen to me now. And then he said, down. And I just said, no. And before I could get the no out good, he punched me with

the closed fist square in the middle of my chest, and then he got on the bed on top of me, and he put one knee on this part of my arm, and another knee on that part of my arm, and then he took those two ropes that he had, and he tied my wrists to the headboard. I went to scream, and at which point he took the scarf that I was wearing on my head off my head and shoved it in my mouth. And he got a pair of black panty hose out. He cut them in half, and then he tied my ankles with the panty hose.

He walks around to the foot of the bed. He steps out of those boxer shorts, climbs up on the bed. He takes the knife, and he cuts off my underwear. And that's when he got on top of me, and that's when the rape happened. The thing that just held me together was, I just kept saying, keep your eyes open and watch everything, because the police are going to want details.

and you're gonna have to tell him. He walked over to the bed, and he took the gag out of my mouth. And he says, I need some money. Where's your pocketbook? Now, I think that made me angry even in the rape, because I'm thinking, you break into my house, you rape me, and now you wanna take my money. And I'm thinking, I don't care what happens.

I'm not letting him have my money. So I wouldn't answer him. He smacked me in the face. I still wouldn't answer him. And then he started rummaging through the room. He rummaged through the bureau. He's looking under the bed. He's looking in the chair.

And right when he got to the closet door, which is where I remember my pocketbook was, that's when I said, wait a minute. My pocketbook's not here. It's at Brenda's house. I'm just lying through my teeth. But then I said, but you have to let me call her. We're going to go shopping, and I don't want her to come right now.

So you have to let me call her. And he thought about it for a moment. and then he took the knife and he cut the panty hose. I thought that I'd be able to dial 911 and pretend that I was talking to Brenda so that I could get help. But in effect, he was standing right in front of me

with the knife pointed right at my neck. And he said, okay, now call Brenda. She said, hello. And I said, Brenda, she said, yeah. I said, listen, I can't go shopping today so, you know, don't come over. And she's like, Karen, what are you talking about? And then I said, listen to me.

I can't go shopping today don't come over and she said are you okay and I said no then she said is Ron there and I said yes and then very casually she said

let me talk to him so I handed him the phone and I said here she wants to talk to you and I thought good he's talking to her now's my time to escape and then it dawned on me when I'd gotten home that night

night, I locked myself in with the deadbolt lock, the key to the lock was in my pocketbook, my pocketbook was in the closet. Plus, I knew that there was no way I could get across the bedroom, open the closet door, reach in, get my pocketbook, get the key out, get down the stairs, unlock the door. I just knew that I couldn't get away from him. And the first time I ran, he didn't follow me, but I was convinced he was going to follow me this time. And he still had the knife. I could see him sort of hunch over a little bit. And then I heard him start to cry. And the only thing, he was sort of mumbling,

the only thing I did remember hear him saying was something to the effect of, well, I guess this means that I can never come back home now. And then he said a few more things to her. And then he said, okay, goodbye. And he hung up the phone. And then he turned around, he looked at me. And he said, Brenda said, she'll be by later.

And then he said, are you okay? That's when I got really mad. And I just said to him, I said, you'll have to kill me before I ever let you touch me again. And that's when he started to laugh. And it was this real creepy kind of laugh. And he said, well, you know what? He said, Monday, you're going back to court. And you're going to tell the judge you changed your mind.

And I'm packing my stuff. And I'm moving back in. And you're not going to tell anybody about this. Because if you do, he said to me, I will kill you. Once Ron left the room, Karen called the police. I remember hearing him walk down both of the flights of stairs, and I remember I heard the refrigerator door open, and as soon as I heard the refrigerator door open,

I picked up the phone, and that's when I dialed 911. I was frantic, and I was whispering, you've got to send the police to my house. My husband's in the house. He has a knife, and he just raped me. I have an order of protection. I'm just babbling. But I'm sort of, it's a historical whisper.

because I didn't want him to know I was on the phone. The woman on the phone was calm, and she said, okay, ma'am, I want you to calm down. I remember her saying, is he still in the room? And I said, I think I said, no, he's downstairs. He has a knife. And she's saying, okay, well, the police are on their way. And after I hung up the phone, that's when I remembered.

I had a wall phone in the kitchen, and it was the kind of a phone that there's a little red light. So when you pick up the phone upstairs, it lights up, extension in use. And I'm thinking to myself, oh, my God, he knows I'm on the phone. And I just remember just laying in that room panicking. It seemed like an eternity, but it couldn't have been more than minutes because I started to hear sirens. And I heard a lot of sirens.

Eventually, it dawned on me that he was gone, so I got up enough courage to go down and I let the police in. Ron had fled when he heard the police sirens. I worked with the detectives because they said that I was going to have to help them catch him. They said that he will eventually call you, and I said, okay, and how am I going to do this? And then I got this clever idea. While we were married, he had gotten injured on the job, and he had a workman's compensation case pending. And about three weeks or so after the rape, while he was still out there, and they hadn't caught him yet,

A letter came from the Workman's Compensation Board that they had scheduled a hearing date for him for the 26th of August. Still at large, Ron called Karen at her workplace. And I don't even remember what he said to me, but I remember saying to him, I've got good news for you. You won your compensation case,

and you're going to get three years back salary in one lump sum in a check. But you have to go to the Workman's Compensation Board in Brooklyn. I gave him the address in the time it was the hearing date. I don't know what the start of his case was, but I was lying. But you have to go there and be there at this date and this time to get this money. And apparently, from what I was told, he was sitting in the audience, and when they called his name, he stood up,

and then saw that the detective that was on the side room, and that's how they got him. Ronald Coleman was sentenced to nine years in prison. Karen is now the associate director of the Bronx Sexual Assault Response Team. I survived because I refused to close my eyes that I stayed awake and I watched everything and I think I survived because I refused to be silent about it.

I told right away. I survived is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart choice. Progressive loves to help people make smart choices. That's why they offer. a tool called AutoQuote Explorer that allows you to compare your progressive car insurance quote with rates from other companies. So you save time on the research and can enjoy savings

when you choose the best rate for you. Give it a try after this episode at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates, not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. It's 2007 in Fall River, Massachusetts. What we do for a living is we build tunnels. In order to do a tunnel, you've got to do a shaft. You know, that's for access to the tunnel. On this job, we had just sink the shaft. We just dug all the way, all the way down.

From when we started up the surface, we dug our way down 120 feet. And we just get to the bottom of it. Ali, Kenny, and Johnny are tunnelers, digging out rock at the bottom of a 120-foot shaft. So we're off to the side, and all of a sudden we get a loud pop. and we thought it sounded like compressed air, like an air line let go or something at first, but then a lot of sand and muddy water starts hitting the top of my excavator.

An excavator is a mechanical digger that removes rock and soil. Then all of a sudden, all the soil starts coming with the water. So when everything get black, you can't really see what the water looks like, except for you could feel it and hear it coming down on you. And I'd say the water pressure was almost like someone turned a really heavy hose straight at you. Water was pouring out of a burst sewer pipe above them. The three men were in danger of drowning in the shaft. Their only link to the surface was a two-way radio.

We realized that whatever was coming in was heavy. And the rate that it was rising, you know, that there was something wrong. But the water was your communication out. And it washed the lights out, so the whole place go dark. Well, the big gush that we hear, or the big boom that we hear, never stopped. It just kept going on. Everything just went black. No communication, no radio, because the water was so heavy along with whatever is coming with the water.

You know, everything went out. John and Ali said, what's that? I go, this is not a good thing. I said, I go, the saw culvert just breached open. And I said, we're going to get a lot of water. We just started looking for higher ground. The higher, the better. Because the pump wasn't pumping enough,

wasn't handling a lot of water. So we just started getting a little higher and higher on the walls and the rock. We kind of stuck together. I grabbed the pump electrical line to get a little higher. It's not a good thing to grab. It's electric in water. But at that point, we were trying to climb it,

I'm scaling the walls like rats. Ali, Kenny, and Johnny held on to rock bolts to keep their heads above water. I started freaking out because I know I can't swim. Even if we could float to the top, I don't think I could float to the top because I, you know, I probably would just panic in the water. You know, I'm from Jamaica, and I'm supposed to know how to swim because I think Jamaica is one big beach, but I don't think there was time to panic. You know, you just, you know, do whatever you think it is that you're going to survive.

I see something bobbing in the water. And when I saw something bobbing, I thought that was the top of the excavator. I thought that was the excavator bobbing in the water. In seconds, the water had covered the seven-foot-tall excavator. Ali couldn't swim and knew he was in danger of drowning. And as I reach over to grab the top of the excavator, I said to myself,

if the excavator is bobbing, that means I'm dead. from the time that the water started coming in and the time when I'm heading for the excavator when the water's up to our neck, it's like 20 seconds. And I checked to myself, I thought about my wife and I thought about my kids and I said, you know, this is it. There's no way out. What are you going to do?

As I'm heading towards the top of the excavator and as I reached out to grab onto the top of the excavator to go up, I felt the expanded metal. And I said, this is not the excavator. This is the cage. Attached to a crane, the cage was used to lift the workers in and out of the shaft. Both the excavator and the cage were on the floor of the shaft covered by water. I just felt my way around and I dove through the window of the cage.

And the moment I dove through the window of the cage, the cage took off. And so me and John were left down the hole, but we were still in the same spot that we were. And when our eyes adjusted to the darkness, we realized that the cage was going up. The cage, with alley inside, was lifted out of the shaft by the crane driver above. At the same time, I was swearing at the guys up top, because I thought they up top could see what's going on in the hole, knowing that they're taking off with me and there's two of guys there. That was the worst feeling in my entire life. The moment I reached to where I could see the people up top, which was about five people up there,

looking over into the shaft, when I came up and they saw me in the cage, that's what I know we had a problem, because when they saw me, it's almost like they saw a ghost because they're expecting three people and there's only one. Well, the moment I get up there, they was going to pick the cage up and swing me over, put you on the ground, then swing the cage back, and go get the other two guys. Safety protocol strictly forbids employees to perform rescue operations.

Ali decided he couldn't wait for an emergency rescue team to arrive. But some circumstances like that one, there was no time to wait. You wait a second. I know the fire department probably would really want to go rescue the guys. But, I mean, time for them to get in the cage. It would have been too late. Water was rising up the shaft at a rate of 10 feet per minute. The water was rising so fast down there.

I just tell them, hey, you guys throw me a flashlight and drop me back in the hole. I know where those guys are. You know, and they threw me a flashlight, and the crane started going back down. And as soon as the cage hit where the water is coming, in, the kids start going from side to side, swinging, hitting out the rocks, but they keep lowering it down slowly and they drop it in. Ali had only minutes to locate Kenny and Johnny in the dark and get them out. Kenny and Johnny were struggling to keep afloat.

So me and John were just kind of staying together and we're agreeing on what we're going to do. We were trying not to panic because that's the worst thing you could ever do. You want to stay on top of your game so we can get out of this thing. By that time, there was a good six, seven feet of water. in the hole, so both of us were swimming. We need to stay right here because they're going to send it back down, but they're not going to know where we are, and we don't want to be in the middle where the cage just was.

We want them to land the cage back down, so we want to stay against the wall where we were because we were safe where we were at. Kenny and Johnny clung to the walls of the shaft as the water rose around them. As the cage returned with Ali inside, it plunged into the rising water. The time I get back down there was about 15.

feet of water in the hole. And Johnny was hanging on the wires right in the water right there. He yelled for us, and I jumped off the rock boat that I was hanging on and kind of swam to the cage. And I said, Kenny, the cage is here, and he swam over. I dragged him through the window, put him in. Johnny saw the flashlight, the little light in the thing, and he jumped over and jump on top of the cage. The cable went slack, which caused the crane to pull the cage up to steady it. But I guess after I found out that they saw the cable get loose to the crane and they

pull it back. When they're pulling back the cage, for one second I said to myself, I hope to God they're not pulling back the cage again and I didn't get the guys yet. And I grabbed them off the cage and pull them through that window and the cage just took off again because they have no communication. So

whether or not them guys were ready, the cage was going up again. We jumped and climbed into the cage. Just and said, I love you, man. It was just a good feeling when we came up and saw everybody up on top, and everybody was whistling and clapping

and, yehoun, I could say, that we all made it out. The crate operator swing us over. The cage landed on the ground, which was you wouldn't believe all happy that feeling was to be on dry ground. I've never been kissed by so many men in my entire life. It's unbelievable.

We had this, it was good. It was good. It was real good. It's almost like you could have a heart attack and die from being so happy. Heavy rain had caused the sewer pipe to burst at a weak point. The shaft took about eight minutes for that whole shaft to fill all the way up to the top. But I think they said it was like 10,000 gallons a minute or something like that. Ali had managed to rescue his colleagues from the flooding shaft in just over five minutes. If anyone had thought about what we're supposed to do,

two guys would have been dead, but no one thought about what we're supposed to do. We just do what we had to do. I survived because everybody stayed into their safety game. We try to stay on our game. We look out for one of another. That's why I survived, because everybody stayed on their game. I survived because luck, the guys up top, and God. That's the three reason why I'm here today.

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