8 minute read
Kidnapping and redemption
Kidnapping By Gabriel Stovall and Raquel Wroten & redemption
Kidnappingredemption
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OOn December 20, 1974, in Coral Gables, Florida, David McAllister leaned out the window of his motor home and stopped 10-year-old Chris Carrier as he walked home from the school bus stop.
“Hey, aren’t you Hugh Carrier’s son? How’s Nony?” David used Chris’ father’s name and his mother’s family nickname to disarm him. He lured Chris into the motor home under the guise of planning a party for his dad.
David, who introduced himself as “Chuck,” was a disgruntled former employee of the family. He had lost his job due to a drinking problem.
Missing a turn
“Back in the 1970s, the fact that he could recognize me from my father’s resemblance and my mother’s nickname put him in a circle of trust,” Chris explains. “It was intrinsic for me to say, ‘Oh, he’s safe,’ and there were no red fl ags or warnings for me at all.”
After a few moments riding down a south Florida highway, David stopped and pulled over, saying he’d missed a turn. He handed Chris a map and asked him to look for a particular highway while McAllister retrieved something further back.
“Next thing I know, I look over my shoulder and see this gentleman standing behind me holding an ice pick,” Chris said. “Before I could fi gure out anything, he pulled me away from the window and into the middle of the RV. He put me on my back and began to stab me in the chest. My mind started to race. ‘I don’t know who you are, why you’re doing this.’ I was small for my age, and he was a full adult. I kept putting my hand across my chest to guard myself and he’d pull it away.”
“I remember praying, ‘Father, forgive him because he doesn’t know, or at least I don’t know what he’s doing.’”
It got worse.
Empty six days
As David stood over Chris, he said, “I’m going to take you somewhere to drop you off and call your daddy to let him know where you are so he can come to pick you up.” They drove for a while and fi nally stopped at a remote marsh in the Everglades.
“He pointed to a tree and told me to sit,” Chris recalled. “Then he pulled out the gun I had seen outlined in his left pocket, aimed it for my left temple, pulled the trigger, and that’s the last thing I remember.”
Chris Carrier reflects and shares his story of forgiving the man who kidnapped, shot and left him for dead when he was a child.
David drove Chris to a country road in the Everglades that was locally known as “alligator alley.” Carrier’s family would never forget the next six days filled with futile searches and tips on Chris’ whereabouts that ultimately proved empty. Those six days featured an emptiness and heartache felt by Hugh and Norma Carrier, Chris’ parents. Christmas had arrived and without Chris, celebrating was impossible. The unspoken acceptance in the Carrier family of Chris’ death—his bodied buried or drowned—meant no one would see him again.
Then the telephone rang, and everything changed. A detective answered and handed the phone to Hugh. Chris spoke, and when Hugh heard his voice and asked him a few confirming questions, Hugh fell to the ground and the entire house erupted in praising God.
Safe and sound
A “Good Samaritan” in a white truck had seen Chris on the side of the road and took him to the nearest hospital. Unconscious for six days in an alligator-filled swamp, Chris lost vision in his eye
but otherwise recovered somehow unscathed. He endured a life-altering experience, but it didn’t change his childlike mentality.
“What did I get for Christmas?” Chris thought. “My mind didn’t have any recognition of the danger I had survived.”
Over the following days and weeks, all that changed, and for years, he lived in fear of every middle-aged-looking man. He quit sleeping in his room, instead occupying a sleeping bag underneath his parents’ bed.
Beyond that, he led a normal life.
At one point, Chris was asked to identify the suspect from a lineup. He couldn’t do it because he didn’t have the certainty he’d pick the right person, and that struck a different kind of fear in him.
“If I point the finger at someone and he’s not the man who abducted me, now I’ve gotta worry about two potential threats,” he explained.
So, he swept it all under the rug as best he could. He went on to college and then married and started his own family. Considering all that happened, Chris lived an ordinary life. Until, again, it became extraordinary.
Finding closure
In the summer of 1996, Chris received a call from the Coral Gables police department. A retired police chief found David McAllister in a North Miami nursing home and managed to coax a confession out of him. Once that happened, the officer called Chris to ask him two questions:
1. Will you accept David’s confession to close this case? 2. Would you like to meet him face to face for the sake of closure?
The first one was a no-brainer. The second, not so much.
Chris and his family visited David often. They talked and prayed, and shortly before David passed away, Chris led him to Christ. “That was one of those questions I never imagined hearing,” Chris said. “I think for a moment after he asked me that question, there was a dramatic or spiritual pause where I prayed and laughed and said, ‘Father, did you set me up?’
“I mean, what do you say to a guy when the last time you saw him, he put a bullet in your head?”
For a believer who understands that every moment in life is a God-opportunity, the answer proved simple for Carrier. He drove to the North Miami nursing home with his friend, who helped organize the reunion.
Opportunity for grace
Chris called this the turning point. And it opened up the opportunity for this event to become more a God-story than just a feel-good story. It was after then that Chris realized God was leading him to more.
“I had decided that friendship was not enough,” Chris said. “So, I said to him, ‘I’d like you to know what’s been the source of my strength through all this.’”
Chris shared the gospel with David, and there on his deathbed, David prayed with the boy he tried to murder and found new life.
“For those of us who are in a position where we feel like we’re good-for-nothing or past the point of no return or unforgivable, look at what God did through this,” said Chris. “What God did in my life and through David’s life has given me hope that there’s nothing in this world that His grace is not bigger than.”
Gabriel Stovall and Raquel Wroten write for the North American Mission Board.
Want to hear the full story? Go to whosyourone.com/kidnapped to listen to the podcast series of Chris Carrier’s story and to share it with someone who needs the hope of the gospel.
