A WOMAN hit the headlines across the globe after telling her story of being ‘kidnapped’ while backpacking in Australia.

Mary Kate Heys, 20, feared for her life when she was driven away from a hostel by a Swedish man who would not let her out of his vehicle.

And the story of how the former Ramsbottom Woodhey High School pupil contacted her dad, back in Bury, via text message to ask him to call the police.

Ms Heys, told Australian media she had been in the country for two weeks when she met her would-be kidnapper at the hostel where she was staying in Mooloolaba, Queensland.

The man had woken her in the early hours of the morning and asked Ms Heys to ‘go an adventure’.


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Ms Heys said she was concerned for the man, who appeared to be in a manic state, and got in the car with him.

But then he said he was driving her to Cairns, 1,600km away, and would not let her out – saying he believed he was an alien.

Ms Heys said: “He said do you want to go on an adventure of a lifetime, and I was a bit concerned about him because his eyes were really wide and he had psychotic eyes like he’d lost it.

“I thought there might have been something that had happened and, as his friend, I wanted to figure out what had happened and try and help him.

“I got in the car and he shot off out of the gates, at this point I was panicking.”

She said she sat quietly in the passenger seat, as not to alarm the man, and evaluated what to do.

Ms Heys said they stopped to get a drink at a petrol station, and by this point he thought she was on his side.

She added: “I got out and I walked into the petrol station while he was filling up the car.

“People would think that I could have run away at this point, but I was so scared and I thought he was capable of anything, I didn’t know what was going to happen.

“I said to the woman behind the till, don’t be alarmed, don’t look to your left, but there’s a man that’s basically kidnapped me and won’t let me leave him, I need you to get his registration plate and ring the police.”

When no police arrived Ms Heys contacted her dad back home, asking him to call the Australian authorities.

After travelling for over an hour, a police car pulled the pair over in Gympie, Queensland, and Ms Heys jumped out of the vehicle before it stopped.

She made a statement at a nearby police station.

Ms Heys told Australian media that the man was taken to a mental institution and she would not be pressing charges.

A spokesman for Queensland Police Service said: “Our information suggests a woman agreed to accompany a man to Brisbane from a hotel.

“It was during the journey that she asked to leave the car, but was refused.”

The spokesman said officers stopped the car after the woman contacted her father in the UK.

“A 22-year-old man was taken to hospital for medical treatment and a 20-year-old British national woman was not physically injured during the incident,” he said.

“She has withdrawn her complaint and therefore the police will take no further action in relation to this matter.”