Most of us get up in the morning we never really think that anything major is going to happen that day. For the most part, we have an accurate assessment of the day ahead of us and we may go to work, come home and spend a quiet evening before going to bed and waking up to do it all over again. The problem is, there are things that can happen out of the blue and we may never even recognize that it is an issue until it is too late.
That is what happened to a 20-year-old University of South Carolina student who came face-to-face with a horrifying moment on July 26, 2017. Jordan Dinsmore was just getting done with her shift at a local restaurant and she drove home to an apartment complex where she lived. As she was getting out of her car, a pair of men came out of nowhere from a wooded area and they were pointing a gun at her.
“I panicked and started screaming,” she told Teen Vogue. “‘Shut up or I’ll shoot you,’ the guy holding the gun told me as he forced me to the ground.”
She drove them to an ATM machine because they weren’t able to drive her vehicle, due to the fact that it had a manual transmission. She took out $300 and then begged them to take her car and leave. They refused to do so.
“‘Now you’re going to drive us somewhere else,’” one of the young men said. “‘And when we get there, you’re going to be raped.’”
Dinsmore’s mind began racing. “I thought back to my mom,” she told a local news station.
“She was almost a victim of sexual assault when she was in college, and she fought back and fought the man off, and I thought, ‘You know, I’m going to be strong like my mom. I’m going to get myself out of this.’”
Beth Turner, her mother, had always told her to “never let someone take you to a second location” because “that’s where the really bad stuff happens.”
Oddly enough, the assault that Turner was experiencing was very similar to the one that her mother had experienced.
A man had come up from behind her car and was attempting to attack her. She violently kicked him and was able to escape. Dinsmore took her mother’s advice, and didn’t buckle her seat belt when she got into the car after taking money out of the ATM. She also waited until they were at an intersection and three cars were approaching from different directions.
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She put the car in neutral and jumped out as it was traveling about 30-40 miles per hour. They couldn’t drive the vehicle so they fled on foot and a woman who saw Dinsmore running up the highway dialed 911.
After calling her mother and reassuring her that she was fine she told her what happened.
“You know, as a parent, you tell your kids stuff all the time,” Turner said. “You don’t know what they’re listening to you, don’t know what they’re paying attention to, and to hear … that she was actually listening and that was what was with her in her head … feels really good.”
“I had always told her, don’t ever let somebody get you out of the public eye.”
“I knew she was a tough, smart, bright girl… I didn’t know she had this in her, though,” she said with a proud smile and a shake of her head. “I didn’t know she had this in her.”