DOUBLE DATE TO HELL

'I didn't think I was going to make it': Student shot, sexually abused, slashed with glass and tortured for 40 HOURS in case of mistaken identity speaks out for the first time since his rescue

By Snejana Farberov

Daily Mail
February 14, 2017

As he sat in a bathtub red with his own blood, which was gushing from a gunshot wound in his leg and a ghastly cut on his head, kidnap victim Nicholas Kollias says he did not think he was going to survive.

But with his robust physique and extensive football training, the University of Rochester student was not going to go quietly.

'I'm not going to give up without a fight,' Kollias recalled thinking during his 40 hours of captivity two years ago.

'I'm not going to close my eyes. I was thinking about my family, parents and God. I didn't want to die and give in to these people.'

Kollias, now 23, is speaking out publicly for the first time about his abduction and dramatic rescue by a SWAT team in Rochester, New York, which made national headlines in December 2015.

Authorities have said Kollias and fellow senior Ani Okeke Ewo were lured to a bungalow in Rochester by a group of nine men and women in a case of mistaken identity related to a drug robbery.

Last November, a jury found Lydell Strickland, David Alcarez-Ubiles, Inalia Rolldan and Ruth Lora guilty of kidnapping and brutally torturing the two college seniors with knives, bats, pipes and a chainsaw.

Five other defendants, among them Elliot Rivera, Leah Gigliotti, Samantha Hughes, Jesus Castro-Ubiles and Dennis Perez, have pleaded guilty to kidnapping charges.

Kollias, a native of Northbrook, Illinois, was a senior at the University of Rochester majoring in business when on December 4, 2015, he agreed to accompany Ewo to a rendezvous with two women at a house off campus.

Ewo had been talking to one of the women on Facebook, and she convinced him to come over to her place on Friday night and bring along a friend to meet her girlfriend.

Speaking exclusively to the Chicago Tribune, Kollias says he was aware that college students were often targeted by criminals off campus, and for that reason he usually avoided straying too far away from the university. On that particular night, he threw caution to the wind but soon came to regret that decision.

As he was riding in a car with his friend and the two women, whom he did not know, Kollias recalled thinking to himself that it was probably a bad idea.

But despite his growing reservations about the nighttime double date, the senior staid put and the car soon pulled up in front of a two-story peach-colored house.

The two male students and their dates went inside, where they were greeted by a strong smell of urine.

Kollias says they had just sat down on a leather couch when the living room was suddenly plunged into darkness, and a moment later they were surrounded by a group of masked men brandishing guns and other weapons.

Following his instinct, Kollias jumped to his feet and ran for the front door, but one of the assailants discharged a 22.-caliber rifle at him, with the bullet breaking a femur in the same leg on which Kollias had undergone surgery to repair a football injury just two months earlier.

Kollias says he was then struck in the head with a baseball bat and dragged into the bathroom, where he was joined by his friend.

Over the next 40 hours, the kidnappers would jab knives under the victims' toes, douse them with flammable liquid and threaten to set them on fire, sexually abuse them and fire a gun near their heads in order to induce them to reveal their debit card PIN numbers.

At some point, Kollias was shot a second time in his other leg, but he would only learn about it after his rescue.

In the course of the harrowing ordeal, Kollias says his captors placed him, still bleeding from his gunshot wounds, in the bathtub as they proceeded to clean up the rest of the house, which was smeared with gore from their wounds.

'I was sitting there for 30 minutes, just like the whole entire tub is red with blood everywhere,' Kollias recalled.

The wounded college senior and his friend were later moved into a room with an inflatable mattress, where they would spend more than 24 hours, at times restrained with duct tape and wire.

Then on the evening of December 6, nearly 40 hours into their captivity, one of the abductors suddenly walked into the room without his mask, untied a flabbergasted Kollias and informed him that he was free to go.

Just moments later, a SWAT team descended on the house and set off explosive devices to disorient the suspects.

Officers in Kevlar vests armed with assault rifles stormed the residence and pulled Kollias and Ewo to safety.

Later at the hospital, Kollias was reunited with his parents, who reassured him that he was safe now.

Kollias, a former football player and classically trained pianist, would spend the next 25 days at the hospital undergoing treatment for his injuries, followed by intense physical therapy.

Within weeks of Kollias and Ewo's rescue, police arrested all nine suspects in the kidnapping.

In December, Lydell Strickland, who was believed to have been the ringleader in the kidnapping and torture, was sentenced to 155 years in prison after being found guilty of 31 charges, which included assault, gang assault and robbery.

David Alcaraz-Ubiles was found guilty of kidnapping and weapons charges and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Meanwhile, Inalia Rolldan and Ruth Lora, were lured Kollias and Ewo into the trap, were each sentenced to seven years in prison after being convicted of kidnapping and weapons charges.

Prosecutors said Ewo had been wrongly identified as an individual involved in the robbery of local marijuana drug dealers, and that mistake prompted the kidnapping. Kollias was kidnapped and tortured only because he happened to be with his friend that night.

Nicholas Kollias has filed a civil lawsuit against all nine defendants seeking $10million in damages for assault battery and unlawful imprisonment.

Despite the traumatizing experience, Kollias was able to graduate from college a semester early with a Bachelor's degree in business administration. He currently lives in suburban Chicago and works in wealth management.