An American tourist in Mexico on Wednesday spoke about how he was kidnapped and mugged by his taxi driver during the end of his vacation, before being ambushed by a group of men with a machete and left for dead in the streets.
Dustan Jackson had just ended a vacation in Cancun with his wife when he hopped into a taxi cab in order to buy chewing tobacco in the country. After not finding some in a nearby gas station, the taxi driver reportedly kidnapped him and took him to a grocery store that the driver claimed had the tobacco he was looking for, according to KION 46.
“I get out, and I'm like ‘Ok,’ and then as I'm walking in, it's boom, lights out, and the next thing I know, I'm waking up in a ditch,” Jackson said.
He was then attacked by a group of men with machetes whom he claimed was attempting to cut his Achilles tendon so that he would be unable to fight, and that, after the incident, he was left to a d in the middle of nowhere as he screamed for help, FOX 11 reported.
“They went to cut my Achilles tendon, and they missed, and instead of hitting it, they hit the bottom of my foot, and then my foot just flapped around,” he said. “They were trying to cut all my tendons and leave me for dead.”
Jackson claimed that during this time, cops saw him and turned him away as he asked for help, and that in desperation, he had decided to go underneath a tarp and die. But he said that he was able to motivate himself to continue and found a female police officer who helped him get to the airport, where a woman from Africa whose flight got canceled offered to help him.
“I don't know what kind of power it is when they talk about the mental strength that you have as a human being because at this point, however long I was laying there, pretty much just waiting to die, something inside of me, that strength came to me and said ‘You’ve got family, you've got kids. Get up,’” he said.
Since then, Jackson has had four surgeries in order to repair the damage done to his foot and shoulder, though the damage is so deep that he has been unable to do more strenuous activity like swing a golf club or play catch with his children ever again.
“I take the little times in life, I don't take them for granted anymore,” he said. “You just don't know what life is going to bring you, so never give up. Keep going. Everybody has a purpose.”
