NATION : Kuwait Escapee Gets Mugged
After fleeing across the desert to escape the Iraqi army, a recently returned Middle East hostage was mugged in a hotel parking lot.
William Longthorne, a 64-year-old mechanical engineer who had been working in Kuwait, said he was robbed Tuesday night by a man with a gun who said he was hungry.
Longthorne handed the gunman his $200 wristwatch and reported the robbery to hotel employees, who called police.
“It didn’t faze me until after it was over,” he said.
Longthorne said he wasn’t nervous during the holdup after seeing “all those Iraqi guns.”
He escaped from Kuwait three weeks ago, driving across the desert to Saudi Arabia with two other men, he said.
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