Kidnapping victim rolls from car, jumps into truck on I-285

Bruce Hembree was supposed to be driving home with a load of lumber in the back of his pickup truck.

Instead he somehow ended up with a bloodied kidnapping victim who, with his hands tied by an extension cord, fell or jumped out of a car while it was traveling 70 mph in front of him, according to an Atlanta police report.

“It was certainly a very harrowing experience,” said Hembree, 37, of Newnan. “I was terrified. He was obviously in great duress because he came out of a car at highway speed.”

The incident happened Sunday afternoon, bringing traffic to a halt on the interstate near Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, the report said.

Hembree said he was returning to a spot along I-285 where some lumber had fallen out of his truck.

One mile from that spot, a car in front of him swerved to the left and Hembree got his first look at the kidnapping victim, 25-year-old Deshon Blackmon, who had just fallen from the trunk or door of a silver Dodge Neon.

“He was rolling through the middle of my lane, looking like he was a rag doll,” Hembree said. “He was leaving bits and pieces of clothing and skin as he rolled.”

Hembree slowed down to avoid hitting Blackmon, who jumped up, hopped in the back of Hembree’s truck and started banging on his back window “like it was a Humvee and we were in a firefight or something,” he said.

“Go! Go! Go!” the young man screamed at Hembree, saying that his captors had his ID and were going to kill his mother.

But Hembree didn’t move, wary of what the suspects in the Neon were going to do. The rest of the highway traffic stopped, too, he said.

“And they were all looking at that car,” he said.

The Neon took off, so Hembree drove to the next exit, pulled over and called 911. He said Blackmon was bleeding profusely and had lost the skin off his back and head.

A police officer talked to two of Blackmon’s friends, both of whom said the kidnapping was drug-related.

Blackmon told police that some men kidnapped him from his house in southwest Atlanta four hours earlier.