MACON, Miss. (AP) — Friends and neighbors of an American civilian taken hostage in Iraq gathered last night for a vigil outside the county courthouse, after a morning deadline imposed by his abductors passed.
Thomas Hamill, 43, was snatched Friday by gunmen who attacked a fuel convoy he was guarding, the latest in a string of kidnappings in Iraq.
“I’m just praying,” his grandmother Vera Hamill said yesterday.
Mr. Hamill works for the Houston-based engineering and construction company Kellogg, Brown & Root, a division of Halliburton, said his wife, Kellie.
His captors threatened to kill him unless U.S. troops ended their assault on the city of Fallujah. The deadline passed yesterday morning with no word on Mr. Hamill’s fate.
Several hundred residents gathered for a night vigil outside the Noxubee County Court House.
“We’re just all pulling together for this man,” said Mayor Dorothy Baker Hines.
Vera Hamill said Halliburton officials asked the family not to talk to the press, fearing that they might say something that could jeopardize her grandson’s safety.
In a videotape of Mr. Hamill broadcast Saturday on the Arab TV station Al Jazeera, his expression was calm but wary. A voice-over read by an Al Jazeera announcer quoted Mr. Hamill as saying he was being treated well.
“I am in good shape,” the voice-over quoted him as saying. “I hope to return home one day, and I want my family to know that these people are taking care of me, and provide me with food, water and a place to sleep.”
Mr. Hamill went to Iraq in September as a truck driver for Kellogg, Brown & Root, his wife said.
“I don’t really know anything, we don’t know anything. … Prayers are all we need right now,” Kellie Hamill told the Dispatch of Columbus, Miss., in a telephone interview Saturday. “I’m doing about as good as can be expected under the circumstances.”
The news of his capture hit hard in the small community, where friends say almost everyone knows Mr. Hamill.
Lamar White, who owns a country store, described him as a “good guy,” a family man with a young son and daughter.
Mr. Hamill had been in the store about two weeks ago when he was home on emergency leave during his wife’s open-heart surgery. At the time, they had talked about Mr. Hamill’s experiences in Iraq, and Mr. Hamill “said it wasn’t bad over there once you got used to it,” Mr. White said.
Marion Gilbertson, 75, a longtime Macon resident, said her church dedicated their Easter service to Mr. Hamill.
“Instead of having regular service, we prayed for him,” she said.
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