SAN DIEGO — Southern Baptist pastor Manuel Jesus Tec is free after 11 days of torture at the hands of unknown kidnappers who abducted him in Tijuana, Mexico, Oct. 21. Tec is currently recuperating at an undisclosed San Diego hospital and is expected to make a full recovery.
Tec, 59, was released around 6 a.m. Oct. 31 following extensive negotiations, according to Johnny Tec, the pastor’s 30-year-old son. “Dad was hurt,” Johnny Tec said, adding that his father endured significant physical and psychological trauma during the ordeal. Tec was whipped with barbwire whenever he started praying or talking to his captors about God, Johnny Tec said.
“They became angry whenever he tried to pray,” he added. “He was kept in a cage on what he thinks was a ranch someplace. He had no food or water. His whole head was covered in duct tape the whole time except for his nose and mouth. Most of the time, his eyes were also covered with duct tape and on one occasion, they threw acid in his eyes.”
Tec said the family was instructed to meet one of the kidnappers under a Tijuana bridge around 3:30 a.m. Oct. 31.
Complying with the instructions, one of the pastor’s sons arrived at the bridge and was told his father would be delivered in five minutes. After two hours passed and the kidnappers had not produced his father, the son returned home alone.
Johnny Tec said the kidnappers had loosely buried his father under gravel and sand and shot at him with “some kind of machine gun,” according to what the pastor later recounted to his family. Fortunately, none of the bullets pierced the half-buried pastor and the kidnappers departed.
Tijuana policemen — possibly hearing the gunshots — found Tec, pulled him from the sand and gravel and carried him to a local community hospital in Tijuana.
The strange 11-day ordeal began around 5 a.m. Oct. 21 when armed kidnappers abducted Tec as he was crossing over the border from San Diego to Tijuana. His wife, Maria, and son Giovanni were with him but not taken or hurt.
Tec is pastor of a new Hispanic church plant in San Diego called Iglesia Familiar y Vida.
Johnny Tec said the family still has no idea why his father was kidnapped. Tijuana is known as a dangerous border town, where the kidnapping and murder of white-collar professionals by gangs is almost a daily occurrence.
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