Posted on 04/27/2003 9:17:06 AM PDT by miltonim
For survivor of terror attack, faith never wavers
• Don Caswell will return to Levelland on June 22 to speak at First Baptist Church.
• He will talk about his brush with death in Yemen at the hands of an Islamic terrorist and his plans to return to that country.
Even as he stared down the barrel of the gun of an Islamic fanatic intent on taking his life, Don Caswell wasn't afraid.
"I didn't have a lot of fear," he said recently from his home in the East Texas town of Eustace, where he's recovering from two gunshot wounds suffered in the assault.
"To me, God gave me a peace and calm about the whole thing," he said. "God was there. He just wrapped his arms around me."
Caswell, a pharmacist who was raised in Lev elland before moving to East Texas, had no idea he was about to be the only survivor of a terrorist attack that would make headlines worldwide.
Abed Abdul Razak Kamel, 30, had come to the Baptist hospital in Jibla, Yemen, the morning of Dec. 30 for a single purpose — to kill Christians, according to statements made to a judge last week.
Kamel began his bloody rampage by walking into a hospital staff meeting and opening fire. Three of Cas well's colleagues and close friends, Kathleen A. Gar iety of Wauwatosa, Wis., Martha C. Myers of Mont gomery, Ala., and William E. Koehn of Kansas, were killed in the gunfire.
Caswell was working in the pharmacy about 8 a.m. when he heard the shots.
The sounds of gunfire are "not unusual in Yemen," he said. "They shoot their guns a lot for different reasons. It seemed early though."
The clinic offices are arranged in a horseshoe shape around an open-air waiting area. Caswell walked out of his office at the same time Kamel emerged from the staff office about 40 feet away.
Caswell saw the gun, which he described as a 9 mm handgun, and then locked eyes with Kamel. Caswell turned to go back into the pharmacy, thinking he could hide behind the counter, he said.
However, he wasn't fast enough. He turned to see Kamel standing about 5 feet away with his gun drawn.
"I knew something was about to happen," Caswell said. He then "hit me on the right side and once on the left side."
Caswell remembered hearing three shots, but he was wounded only twice, he said.
"I fell face forward and hit the floor," he said. "I remained conscious the whole time. I was asking God if this was my time to die."
As it turned out, it wasn't.
In the nearly four months since he was shot, Caswell has thought long and hard about his good fortune.
"With the other three, he was really accurate, a real good shot," he said.
Kamel, though, missed Cas well once at close range and the other two shots missed the abdominal cavity by inches.
"I know God's hands were on that gun, for whatever reasons," Caswell said.
Facedown on the floor, Caswell did not see his would-be killer walk out of the room. He later found out Kamel walked into the X-ray department and tried to shoot people there but his gun had run out of bullets.
Kamel was arrested soon afterward.
In the operating room, Caswell learned about the fate of his three colleagues.
"I knew right after they took me to the OR," he said. "Some body else said Bill, Martha and Kathy were shot. Your first thought is you can't believe it happened. (The hospital) had been there 35 years and nothing like that had ever happened."
The U.S. Embassy sent an ambulance the next morning from the capital, Sana', for Caswell.
The following day, he was taken to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates to continue his recovery, he said.
After a brief return trip to Yemen in February to see some friends and visit the graves of Koehn and Myers, he went home to Levelland.
"It was really a good time to come back," he said. "We talked on the phone, but to physically be able to come back and give everybody a hug ... that was much better than the phone. It was just a real emotional time."
Since he's been back, Cas well has spoken to congregations in the Athens area about his experiences. He said he's been taken aback by the interest in his story.
"We didn't realize people would want to hear about this, but it's a good way to give God the glory and know he controls things," Caswell said.
He is scheduled to speak June 22 at the First Baptist Church in Levelland, he said.
Caswell already has talked with Yemeni officials and the FBI, so he won't have to go back to Yemen to testify against Kamel.
Last week, Kamel told a judge he decided to attack hospital workers because he thought they were trying to convert Muslims and were sterilizing Muslim women.
"I acted out of a religious duty," he said, "and in revenge from those who converted Muslims from their religion and made them unbelievers."
Caswell said Kamel made similar comments soon after his arrest.
"More or less, he believed he would be a martyr and go to heaven because he had gotten rid of Christians," Caswell said.
Kamel reportedly had ties with the terrorist organization al-Qaida. Investigators found tapes with the voice of Osama bin Laden in Kamel's home. The hospital attack also has been linked to the Dec. 28 assassination of a Yemeni politician.
Caswell said he agreed with President Bush's decision to invade Iraq in the name of stamping out terrorism.
"I do think we're doing the right thing," he said. It's good "every time we try to get a handle on it like in Iraq. I think we do need to shut down all of their resources so they can't do the acts of terrorism that they have been doing."
Caswell has since forgiven Kamel.
"I never was real angry with him for what he did to me because I made it," he said.
In church presentations with Caswell, his wife, Teri, admits to feeling anger after the attack.
However, "She knew she couldn't continue to feel that way," he said. "Eventually, she was able to forgive him, and instantly the anger went away."
More puzzling to Caswell are the reasons why he was spared when his friends were not.
Koehn and Myers spent more than half their lives working in the hospital, while Gariety worked there for about 10 years.
Caswell had been in Yemen for only 18 months.
He eventually decided God had spared him for a reason. He hopes to return to Yemen in July to continue his humanitarian work. He could be celebrating his 50th birthday there on July 27.
He will go to a neighboring town to work in an orphanage and prison, he said. The shooting hasn't changed how he feels about the Yemeni people.
His friends there want Americans to know Kamel does not represent the people of Jibla.
Kamel moved to Jibla from the capital for the purpose of attacking the hospital, which treats about 40,000 patients annually, many of them for free.
"Of course, (my family is) concerned," Caswell said, about the decision to go back to Yemen.
"If it was up to them, (they wouldn't want me to go,)" he said. "But they do respect our feelings and the fact that we're doing what God wants us to do. It's not like they're trying to stop us."
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The Caswell family-Teri, Don, Ben, 11, and Caleb, 5-gathered on Easter Sunday. Don Caswell was injured in late December in a terrorist shooting in Jibla, Yemen, and has been mending at his East Texas home. The Levelland native is scheduled to visit his hometown in June.
--Provided by Don Caswell |
This is the second publication this week to do that. The first really surprised me: it was in a story published by al Bawaba, referring to Algerian terrorists holding European hostages.
These creeps' PREFERRED targets are CIVILIANS. Why? To terrify them of course. The creeps are therefore NOT militants, or freedom fighters or guerrilla fighters. They are TERRORISTS because they choose targets with the maximum potential to TERRIFY the public and FORCE the public, THROUGH TERROR, to aquiesce to the TERRORISTS demands.
May the Yemeni people be open to the Gospel and receive Christ because of these martyrs.
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