My grandmother’s sister went into the wheat drying room after hearing noises, assuming one of the kids had gotten in. Once inside, she heard a noise coming from a closet. Upon opening it, she discovered a man pointing a gun at her. The man panicked and shot at her head. He then grabbed her phone and started running out. Just then, everyone came out of their rooms, causing a lot of panic. As he ran towards the door within the chaos, my uncle and I grabbed our guns to chase him. He noticed this and yanked my 7-year-old cousin by the wrist, then jumped over the wall with the kid and escaped into the fields. We couldn’t find him.

A few hours later, a ransom call demanded 10 million and insisted not to involve the cops. The father of the kid told him it was impossible to gather 10 million in a hurry. Later, he called the cops. The next morning, the guy called again, agreeing to 4 million and arranging a spot for the exchange. He told the father to come alone.

The next night, they managed to gather around 500,000 and went to the spot, the father and uncle, with the cops following and cutting off access to areas. There, the guy took the money and pointed to a figure in the dark, claiming that was the child, and then rode off.

Luckily, it was indeed the kid. Three hours later, we received a call from the cops that they had caught the guy. I forgot to mention that the cops were this efficient because the family knew all the political leaders of the area and had some ministers in their pockets.

We went to the station to check on the situation, and they had beaten the guy up pretty badly. It turns out we knew the guy; he happened to be the son of the land caretaker and had been the family’s driver for a few years. His original intention was to steal some stuff from the house, but once he got caught, he improvised. His motivation was the fact that the family of the woman he wanted to marry asked for a 400,000 dowry, and he couldn’t afford that.