An American missionary who was abducted at gunpoint in South Africa last week has been rescued by the police in a dramatic operation that left three suspects dead.
Josh Sullivan, 45, was preaching at the Fellowship Baptist Church in Motherwell, near the coastal city of Gqeberha, when he was forcefully taken by armed men last Thursday.
According to a statement released by South African police on Wednesday, officers acted on credible intelligence and tracked the suspects to a house in the KwaMagxaki district of Gqeberha on Tuesday.
As police closed in, the suspects attempted to escape in a vehicle and opened fire on the officers. In the gun battle that followed, all three suspects were fatally shot. Sullivan was found inside the same vehicle and was rescued “miraculously unharmed,” police confirmed.
Sullivan, who moved to South Africa with his family from Tennessee in November 2018, had been actively involved in community outreach through his church ministry.
This incident sheds light on South Africa’s growing insecurity, with police statistics revealing over 17,000 kidnapping cases in the 2023/2024 fiscal year—an 11% increase compared to the previous year.
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