How This Miss Universe Saved Herself From Being Kidnapped

Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters punched an assailant in the throat and fled a carjacking in South Africa.

Miss Universe
Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters (Taylor Hill/WireImage)
WireImage

Miss Universe Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters had a pretty frightening experience just a month after she won Miss South Africa. The New York transplant said she was held up at gunpoint and carjacked by five men on June 7, 2017, when she was in South Africa on her way to an event. She was driving in broad daylight and stopped at a red light when the men approached her. Though she was frightened, three months prior to the incident she had done a women’s empowerment course where they taught her what to do in a situation just like that. She saw the weapons, so she immediately surrendered and gave up the car. But when she got out of the car, one of the men tried to push her back in.

“I said to myself, ‘I’d rather be shot here than kidnapped and never be seen again,’” she told Page Six. “The second destination will never be better than the first. So I punched him in his throat and ran away.”

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