At the age of 18, TikToker Ema (@greenbrier_w) was kidnapped, held at gunpoint, and taken to a second location. When she was 16 years old, she started dating a guy named Russell. He was two grades above her and was really smart, but he came from a very dysfunctional family.
“My parents felt really bad for him and knew that he could make a life for himself, so they allowed him to move in with us,” Ema explained.
“After he graduated from high school, he stayed home to save up money to try to go to college. And I entered my junior year of high school when he realized it just wasn’t possible to save enough money to put himself through college.”
Ema’s parents agreed to send him to the University of Tennessee. So, he went off to college, and they continued to date. By her senior year, their relationship just wasn’t working out, so she broke up with him when he was home for winter break.
He didn’t take it well. As he was driving back to school, he intentionally totaled the car that her parents had bought for him. He ended up dropping out of school and moving back in with them.
By late April, she had had enough and demanded that he move out. Afterward, she moved on with her life, thinking that would be the end of things, but it was only the beginning.
In mid-May, her parents left for a whole weekend to attend a Bar Association event that was two hours away from their hometown. When she arrived home from school that day, she saw Russell’s car in the driveway.
He came out of the house with a shiny, bald head. He was also really hyper, and his eyes bugged out of his head. Apparently, he had been there to babysit her younger siblings until the paralegal who would be staying the weekend got off work. Ema had two twin sisters and a little brother.
He left after that. She went to her friend’s house and returned home with a small group of friends at around 8 p.m. Russell’s car was in the driveway again. She went inside to ask the babysitter, who said Russell’s car was there when she arrived.
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They all started drinking. After some time, she drove one of her friends back home. Then, she and another friend, Alex, decided to smoke out on the deck.
They saw Russell running toward his car. She hoped he wouldn’t notice them, but he ran onto the deck, reached into his pants, pulled out a gun, and pointed it in her face.
He was yelling about how he didn’t see the point in both of them being alive if they weren’t going to be together. Her friend tried to sneak off the deck, but he stepped on a twig. He commanded both of them to get in the car.
“So, Russell puts me in the driver’s seat, puts Alex in the passenger seat, and he’s in the back seat with the gun,” recalled Ema.
“He tells me to drive to this spot. It was called the drop. It’s up this one-lane mountain, and it’s literally like it sounds. It’s a drop-off over a hill that is a dirt road where we all used to go party.”
No one lived in the area. As she made the turn to go up the road to the drop-off, she slowed down as much as she could. She was still going 20 to 30 miles per hour when she told Alex to jump out of the car.
He looked at her in sheer disbelief but did as she said. He jumped out and sprinted for his life. Russell jumped into the passenger seat and ordered her to turn around.
And that’s where she stopped her story. She never thought something like this would happen to her, living in a town of just 852 people. When she thinks back, the whole incident felt like a fever dream.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
