‘We'll never leave again:' Spring Arbor couple back home
Their return to Michigan comes after a Thursday court hearing, in which the court ruled that the Akeos were to be released from custody. The Akeos and U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Charlotte) say they are no longer facing charges, and the entire case against them has been dropped.
The pair was on March 4 at an airport in Cancún on fraud allegations. They were accused of defrauding resort chain out of more than $116,000 by breaching a timeshare contract and illegally cancelling membership charges to an American Express credit card.
6 News spoke with , who said his parents could have been held for up to six months, as a judge previously gave the company that much time to gather evidence.
The Akeos' release comes a day after Barrett . Barrett told 6 News he also spoke with the president of the Quintana Roo Supreme Court to work on getting the couple released.
'We are so happy that it's over,' said Christy.
6 News captured the moment when the Akeo's reunited with their family. Paul Akeo shared what happened after police arrested the couple on March 4th.
'We were whisked off to another facility and then we were sent directly to prison. We weren't able to talk to anybody, didn't have any contact with lawyers, didn't have our phones, so we were just sitting there,' said Paul.
The two say days went by before they could talk to their family or even each other. Now, they're sharing what their time spent inside a maximum security prison in Mexico was like.
'It's awful. It's nothing like you would ever want to go through, it's unbelievable. The language barrier is unreal,' said Christy.
Congressman Tom Barrett shared what he saw in the prison as well when he visited the couple in Mexico.
'I walked through part of the interior of the prison, and it was enough for me to see that no person would want to be detained there, no American should have to go through that, especially under the conditions they were in for the amount of time that they were,' the Congressman said.
Christy's kids started reaching out for help after they heard about the arrest. Word go to U.S. Representative Tom Barrett, who flew to Mexico Wednesday to meet with them.
'I insisted when I went down there that I wasn't going to leave empty handed, and I wasn't going to leave without bringing them back,' Rep. Barrett said.
By then the Akeos felt hopeless, even after meeting with Congressman Barrett.
'I never thought we would be coming home for months,' Christy said.
Congressman Barrett said he met with Mexican officials, who arranged a hearing Thursday. That's when the charges against the Akeos were dropped.
'There were some things that were getting a little uncertain at the end and we were able to resolve those quickly, took a lot of effort from all parties involved,' said Rep. Barrett.
The Congressman adds that every level of both the United States and Mexican Governments were involved in this conversation, including President Donald Trump.
'The president was very excited to hear this and expressed his excitement and welcomed them back to America,' Congressman Barrett said.
Christy said now that the couple is home, the first thing she is going to do is take a shower.
'There were no showers there, and if you could take a shower it was cold,' Christy said.
After a month of uncertainty, this family can now rest easy with the Akeos back in the United States.
'Be thankful for what America has given us,' Paul continued. 'And just be thankful for the little things.'
Thursday evening, 6 News received a statement from the Akeo children, saying:
The Akeo family wishes to thank President Donald J. Trump, his Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs Adam Boehler and Congressman Tom Barrett(R-Lansing) for working tirelessly for the release of Paul and Christy Akeo. We also want to express our deepest gratitude to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Mark Coolidge Johnson, Charge d 'Affaires, U.S. Embassy Mission Mexico and his dedicated team. Through four straight weeks of fear and uncertainty, Congressman Barrett's commitment to bringing our parents' home safely provided us with hope and reassurance. He traveled to Cancun at great personal risk, camped out at the prison and made it clear that he would not return home without them. His heroic efforts as a veteran represent the finest traditions of our nation's military to never leave an American behind. No American should be held hostage to the demands of a private company anywhere in the world. Paul and Christy are under the care of physicians and therapists to be treated for illnesses and trauma inflicted upon them during their captivity. We ask that their privacy be respected as they rest and heal. The family will have much more to say about this ordeal in the coming days.
Lindsey Lemke Hull and Michael Lemke, April 4.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
an hour ago
- USA Today
Trump's golf trip to Scotland reopens old wounds for some of his neighbors
BALMEDIE, Scotland − Long before talk of hush-money payments, election subversion or mishandling classified documents, before his executive orders were the subject of U.S. Supreme Court challenges, before he was the 45th and then the 47th president: on a wild and windswept stretch of beach in northeast Scotland, Donald Trump the businessman was accused of being a bad neighbor. "This place will never, ever belong to Trump," Michael Forbes, 73, a retired quarry worker and salmon fisherman, said this week as he took a break from fixing a roof on his farm near Aberdeen. The land he owns is surrounded, though disguised in places by trees and hedges, by a golf resort owned by Trump's family business in Scotland, Trump International Scotland. For nearly 20 years, Forbes and several other families who live in Balmedie have resisted what they describe as bullying efforts by Trump to buy their land. (He has denied the allegations.) They and others also say he's failed to deliver on his promises to bring thousands of jobs to the area. Those old wounds are being reopened as Trump returns to Scotland for a four-day visit beginning July 25. It's the country where his mother was born. He appears to have great affection for it. Trump is visiting his golf resorts at Turnberry, on the west coast about 50 miles from Glasgow, and at Balmedie, where Forbes' 23 acres of jumbled, tractor-strewn land, which he shares with roaming chickens and three Highland cows, abut Trump's glossy and manicured golf resort. On July 28, Trump will briefly meet in Balmedie with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to "refine" a recent U.S.-U.K. trade deal, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Golf, a little diplomacy: Trump heads to Scotland In Scotland, where estimates from the National Library of Scotland suggest that as many as 34 out of the 45 American presidents have Scottish ancestry, opinions hew toward the he's-ill-suited-for-the-job, according to surveys. "Trump? He just doesn't know how to treat people," said Forbes, who refuses to sell. What Trump's teed up in Scotland Part of the Balmedie community's grievances relate to Trump's failure to deliver on his promises. According to planning documents, public accounts and his own statements, Trump promised, beginning in 2006, to inject $1.5 billion into his golf project six miles north of Aberdeen. He has spent about $120 million. Approval for the development, he vowed, came with more than 1,000 permanent jobs and 5,000 construction gigs attached. Instead, there were 84, meaning fewer than the 100 jobs that already existed when the land he bought was a shooting range. Instead of a 450-room luxury hotel and hundreds of homes that Trump pledged to build for the broader community, there is a 19-room boutique hotel and a small clubhouse with a restaurant and shop that sells Trump-branded whisky, leather hip flasks and golf paraphernalia. Financial filings show that his course on the Menie Estate in Balmedie lost $1.9 million in 2023 − its 11th consecutive financial loss since he acquired the 1,400-acre grounds in 2006. Residents who live and work near the course say that most days, even in the height of summer, the fairway appears to be less than half full. Representatives for Trump International say the plan all along has been to gradually phase in the development at Balmedie and that it is not realistic or fair to expect everything to be built overnight. There's also support for Trump from some residents who live nearby, and in the wider Aberdeen business community. One Balmedie resident who lives in the shadow of Trump's course said that before Trump the area was nothing but featureless sand dunes and that his development, carved between those dunes, made the entire landscape look more attractive. Fergus Mutch, a policy advisor for the Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce, said Trump's golf resort has become a "key bit of the tourism offer" that attracts "significant spenders" to a region gripped by economic turmoil, steep job cuts and a prolonged downturn in its North Sea oil and gas industry. Trump in Scotland: Liked or loathed? Still, recent surveys show that 70% of Scots hold an unfavorable opinion of Trump. Despite his familial ties and deepening investments in Scotland, Trump is more unpopular among Scots than with the British public overall, according to an Ipsos survey from March. It shows 57% of people in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland don't view Trump positively. King Charles invites Trump: American president snags another UK state visit While in Balmedie this time, Trump will open a new 18-hole golf course on his property dedicated to his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, who was a native of Lewis, in Scotland's Western Isles. He is likely to be met with a wave of protests around the resort, as well as the one in Turnberry. The Stop Trump Coalition, a group of campaigners who oppose most of Trump's domestic and foreign policies and the way he conducts his private and business affairs, is organizing a protest in Aberdeen and outside the U.S. consulate in Edinburgh. During Trump's initial visit to Scotland as president, in his first term, thousands of protesters sought to disrupt his visit, lining key routes and booing him. One protester even flew a powered paraglider into the restricted airspace over his Turnberry resort that bore a banner that read, "Trump: well below par #resist." 'Terrific guy': The Trump-Epstein party boy friendship lasted a decade, ended badly Trump's course in Turnberry has triggered less uproar than his Balmedie one because locals say that he's invested millions of dollars to restore the glamour of its 101-year-old hotel and three golf courses after he bought the site in 2014. Trump versus the families Three families still live directly on or adjacent to Trump's Balmedie golf resort. They say that long before the world had any clue about what type of president a billionaire New York real estate mogul and reality-TV star would become, they had a pretty good idea. Forbes is one of them. He said that shortly after Trump first tried to persuade him and his late wife to sell him their farm, workers he hired deliberately sabotaged an underground water pipe that left the Forbes – and his mother, then in her 90s, lived in her own nearby house – without clean drinking water for five years. Trump International declined to provide a fresh comment on those allegations, but a spokesperson previously told USA TODAY it "vigorously refutes" them. It said that when workers unintentionally disrupted a pipe that ran into an "antiquated" makeshift "well" jointly owned by the Forbeses on Trump's land, it was repaired immediately. Trump has previously called Forbes a "disgrace" who "lives like a pig." 'I don't have a big enough flagpole' David Milne, 61, another of Trump's seething Balmedie neighbors, lives in a converted coast guard station with views overlooking Trump's course and of the dunes and the North Sea beyond. In 2009, Trump offered him and his wife about $260,000 for his house and its one-fifth acre of land, Milne said. Trump was caught on camera saying he wanted to remove it because it was "ugly." Trump, he said, "threw in some jewelry," a golf club membership (Milne doesn't play), use of a spa (not yet built) and the right to buy, at cost, a house in a related development (not yet constructed). Milne valued the offer at about half the market rate. When Milne refused that offer, he said that landscapers working for Trump partially blocked the views from his house by planting a row of trees and sent Milne a $3,500 bill for a fence they'd built around his garden. Milne refused to pay. Over the years, Milne has pushed back. He flew a Mexican flag at his house for most of 2016, after Trump vowed to build a wall on the southern American border and make Mexico pay for it. Milne, a health and safety consultant in the energy industry, has hosted scores of journalists and TV crews at his home, where he has patiently explained the pros and cons − mostly cons, in his view, notwithstanding his own personal stake in the matter − of Trump's development for the local area. Milne said that because of his public feud with Trump, he's a little worried a freelance MAGA supporter could target him or his home. He has asked police to provide protection for him and his wife at his home while Trump is in the area. He also said he won't be flying any flags this time, apart from the Saltire, Scotland's national flag. "I don't have a big enough flagpole. I would need one from Mexico, Canada, Palestine. I would need Greenland, Denmark − you name it," he said, running through some of the places toward which Trump has adopted what critics view as aggressive and adversarial policies. Dunes of great natural importance Martin Ford was the local Aberdeen government official who originally oversaw Trump's planning application to build the Balmedie resort in 2006. He was part of a planning committee that rejected it over environmental concerns because the course would be built between sand dunes that were designated what the UK calls a Site of Special Scientific Interest due to the way they shift over time. The Scottish government swiftly overturned that ruling on the grounds that Trump's investment in the area would bring a much-needed economic boost. Neil Hobday, who was the project director for Trump's course in Balmedie, last year told the BBC he was "hoodwinked" by Trump over his claim that he would spend more than a billion dollars on it. Hobday said he felt "ashamed that I fell for it and Scotland fell for it. We all fell for it." The dunes lost their special status in 2020, according to Nature Scot, the agency that oversees such designations. It concluded that their special features had been "partially destroyed" by Trump's resort. Trump International disputes that finding, saying the issue became "highly politicized." For years, Trump also fought to block the installation of a wind farm off his resort's coast. He lost that fight. The first one was built in 2018. There are now 11 turbines. Ford has since retired but stands by his belief that allowing approval for the Trump resort was a mistake. "I feel cheated out of a very important natural habitat, which we said we would protect and we haven't," he said. "Trump came here and made a lot of promises that haven't materialized. In return, he was allowed to effectively destroy a nature site of great conservation value. It's not the proper behavior of a decent person." Forbes, the former quarry worker and fisherman, said he viewed Trump in similar terms. He said that Trump "will never ever get his hands on his farm." He said that wasn't just idle talk. He said he's put his land in a trust that specified that when he dies, it can't be sold for at least 125 years.
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
A Kennedy toils in Mississippi, tracing his grandfather's path
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Kennedy nodded to the history. 'I know a bit about my grandfather's visit to the Delta back in the '60s, and how it changed and outraged him to see this in the richest country in the world,' he said. 'I'm proud that my family has spent a lot of their years in office advocating for these people.' Advertisement Kennedy is on a mission to continue the legacy of an American political family that has in recent years lost some of its liberal luster. It angers him that his uncle Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, is a key figure in an administration that is overturning core values of his family. Advertisement The health secretary has defended work requirements for Medicaid recipients, 'which do not work,' the younger Kennedy said. 'The only thing they succeed at is kicking people off Medicaid who need it.' On the elder Kennedy's efforts to ban food dyes, his nephew dismissively replied, 'It's not the dyes that are making people obese.' Still, he shares with his uncle the belief that Democrats are increasingly captive to an urban elite. 'I think the Democratic Party has lost touch with this reality,' he said, staring out at the Delta landscape. Joe Kennedy III and his wife, Lauren Anne Birchfield, arrived at the JFK Library, Sunday, May 4, 2025, in Boston. Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press Kennedy's response is not to run for president as his grandfather did and his uncle might, or at least not yet. Instead he has formed the Groundwork Project, a nonprofit that seeks to develop a network of grassroots resistance in four deep-red states -- Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma and West Virginia -- that have received little attention from left-leaning organizations. Without any meaningful opposition, Kennedy said, those states have become havens for right-wing initiatives, ranging from the evisceration of the Clean Air Act in West Virginia to legislation in Mississippi that banned abortions after 15 weeks and led to the Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade. 'The only way to change the power structures in those states is to organize people,' Kennedy said. 'That's not a short fix. But what else can you do?' The slow grind of organization-building in hostile territory that Kennedy envisions has been done before, mostly by conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity, which was formed in 2004, operates in 35 states and has an annual operating budget of more than $186 million. In contrast, the Groundwork Project operates on a relatively modest $2.8 million a year, much of it disbursed as $25,000 annual grants to about 40 local groups that have fought uphill battles in areas like environmental justice and reproductive rights. Advertisement But the famous name helps. During a three-day trip to Mississippi to observe the efforts that Groundwork Project is helping to underwrite, locals sometimes referred to its founder in awed tones as 'a Kennedy.' During one gathering of local officials, at a diner in Yazoo City, Kennedy addressed the subject of health care by invoking his lineage, saying, 'My family has focused on this for a long time.' In the next breath, Kennedy pointedly brought up another relative: 'My uncle is now part of an administration that is cutting Medicaid.' Jim Kessler, the executive vice president for policy of the centrist Democratic organization Third Way, speculated about the political subtext of Kennedy's criticisms of his uncle. 'It's all but certain that Bobby Jr. is going to run for president as a Republican in 2028,' Kessler said. 'Maybe part of what the younger Kennedy is doing is reclaiming the family legacy as a way to remind people, 'This is who we really are.'' Joseph P. Kennedy III spoke at Atlantic Technical University in Letterkenny, Donegal, Ireland on Oct. 2. Conor Doherty The Oral History of Family Lore Kennedy was not yet born when Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's quest for the presidency was cut short by an assassin's bullet in California in June 1968. The 42-year-old candidate left behind his widow, Ethel, and their 11 children, among them Robert Jr. and Joseph, Joe Kennedy III's father, who would go on to serve in Congress from 1987 to 1999. Kennedy said that he has never read a book about his grandfather, since from infancy he marinated in the oral history of family lore. Inculcated in him were RFK adages such as, 'The gross national product can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.' Advertisement His own trajectory followed the meticulously laid Kennedy path of public service merging with political advancement. He spent his childhood in Boston before attending Stanford University and subsequently serving two years in the Dominican Republic as a Peace Corps volunteer. He returned home to Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard Law School and then worked as an assistant district attorney in Middlesex County. It came as little surprise in February 2012 when he announced his desire to fill the congressional seat soon to be vacated by Rep. Barney Frank. Kennedy -- an earnest and energetic 31-year-old scion with a genetically distinctive aquiline nose, a toothy grin and wavy red hair that deviated from the family's physical template -- coasted to victory without serious opposition. The freshman won over many colleagues in the House, several of whom said in interviews that they had been braced for an entitled brat and instead encountered someone who was thoughtful and unpretentious. He set out to lead on mental health issues as his cousin, Patrick Kennedy, had done before retiring from Congress in 2011. But Kennedy said he grew dismayed by the chamber's partisan divisions and inexplicable lethargy, recalling, 'Even in the majority, I couldn't move my own bills.' By Kennedy's fourth term, restlessness had gotten the better of him. In September 2019, he announced his candidacy for the Senate, a body in which three Kennedy legends -- his grandfather; his great-uncle, the former president; and his great-uncle Ted -- had previously served. He garnered the support of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat who was then the minority leader. Advertisement But the 73-year-old Democratic incumbent, Sen. Edward J. Markey, outfoxed his younger opponent by recasting himself as a rabble-rousing progressive in the manner of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who endorsed Markey. Kennedy, whose tendency is to speak in carefully constructed paragraphs, struggled to come up with his own pithy pitch to voters. Markey won the September 2020 primary by 11 points, and Kennedy became the first in his family to be defeated in a senatorial contest. President Donald Trump gloated on Twitter, 'Pelosi strongly backed the loser!' Being spurned and disparaged by liberal activists was unfamiliar terrain for a Kennedy, and he spent the remainder of 2020 contemplating his options. 'Losing sucks,' Kennedy said. 'But I made the decision to try to build something that keeps you engaged and energized. And if something comes up, perhaps you take it, but you're not sitting around waiting for that to happen.' Joe Kennedy delivered his election-night in Watertown on Sept. 1, 2020, in his unsuccessful Senate race against Ed Markey John Tlumacki/Globe Staff 'You Democrats Think We Don't Know How to Work?' Rejected by progressive activists, Kennedy turned to forgotten agrarian lands like the Mississippi Delta, which has only one major city (Jackson), and is therefore difficult to organize. It's 'what I call a hard-to-fight state,' said Charles Taylor, the executive director of Mississippi's NAACP chapter. Similar impediments exist in Oklahoma, where Republican legislators have passed severe restrictions on abortion and on what can be taught in public school classrooms about racism. Alabama, a third Groundwork Project state, benefits from a more urban population than Oklahoma or Mississippi. But Democratic get-out-the-vote organizers have been reluctant to operate in a state where there is no in-person early voting and where absentee ballots must be signed by a notary or two voting-age witnesses. Advertisement West Virginia is by far the most challenging for Kennedy. Its overwhelmingly rural and white population was long Democratic, but the collapse of the coal and steel industries in the state have spawned a profound distrust of party elites, Kennedy said. He recalled a visit to West Virginia just after he founded the Groundwork Project, when a bearded young man asked him, 'How come you Democrats think we don't know how to work?' To every such question, Kennedy's implicit answer was to organize. 'I think Mississippi has so much to teach our nation about resilience, never losing focus and not giving up when your government is actively working against you,' he said at an event in Indianola. Kennedy is applying the same calm resolve to his own political future. He and his wife, Lauren Birchfield Kennedy, an attorney and children's advocate, have a 6-year-old son and a 9-year-old daughter. Kennedy laments having missed so much of their infancy while serving in Washington. 'The question is, is what I would get out of going back into elective office worth the sacrifice that I asked my family to go through again?' For now, Kennedy is content to leave the question unanswered. 'I'm 44,' he said. 'And at some point down the road, I wouldn't necessarily rule anything out.' This article originally appeared in
Los Angeles Times
an hour ago
- Los Angeles Times
A Syrian American returned to Syria to aid his ailing father. He was executed in sectarian violence
SWEIDA, Syria — The first video opens with Hosam Saraya, a 35-year-old Syrian American and seven other members of his family, walking in a procession down a street, their hands placed on the shoulders of the person in front of them, escorted by gunmen wearing fatigues and waving assault rifles. One of the gunmen says, 'We gave you safe passage,' while others shout religious slogans. Another video shot on July 16 cuts to Saraya and his relatives kneeling in the middle of a roundabout. One of the gunmen speaks to a family member, his voice becoming more menacing as his anger mounts. Then the shooting starts, and Saraya and the others collapse to the ground. Saraya, a member of the Druze religious minority, was living in Oklahoma but had returned to the family home in the Druze-majority city of Sweida to take care of his ill father, relatives said. 'His father improved, and Hosam was supposed to come back to Oklahoma in a month. We're in complete disbelief and shock,' said one U.S.-based relative who refused to be identified, fearing reprisals against her family in Syria. 'We just never thought something like this could happen to us.' Saraya studied finance and accounting at Damascus University before moving to the U.S. in 2014, where he earned an MBA at Oklahoma Christian University. Afterward, he worked as an operations manager at a senior home care company and became a U.S. citizen. He was unmarried. Saraya was among an estimated 1,380 people killed in a spasm of sectarian violence that swept through Sweida this month, when fighting between Bedouin clansmen and Druze militiamen escalated into armed clashes that drew in Syria's fledgling government and Israel, which said it intervened to protect the Druze community. Government forces were supposed to quash any fighting between Bedouins and Druze, residents and Saraya's neighbors say. Instead they left behind a trail of looting, burning homes and the execution of more than 230 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor. This week, Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said he was 'heartbroken' by the death of Saraya, who he said 'was an Oklahoman ... tragically executed alongside other members of his family in Syria.' Relatives in the U.S. said they had been interviewed by the FBI. The Syrian government has yet to reach out to the family here, but said it would hold all government forces accountable for violations. The violence, the third round of sectarian violence to hit Syria since the new Islamist government toppled longtime President Bashar Assad nine months ago, threatens to bring about the disintegration of a country struggling to move on from its 14-year civil war. At the Saraya home in Sweida, signs of the violence are everywhere — walls pockmarked by shrapnel from a hand grenade and family pictures and mirrors cracked by bullet holes. Sitting morosely in the midst of the destruction, one of his relatives, Dima Saraya, 41, recounted what she described as a living nightmare that left her a widow. Most of the family was sleeping when gunmen in fatigues surrounded the house around 6 a.m., shooting the lock off the gate before breaking into the house. Woken up by the commotion, the men told the women and children to stay inside while they went out to stop the gunmen. 'They didn't have any weapons. If they did, those people would have killed them on the spot,' Dima said, adding that one of the fighters, who identified himself as Abu Jaafar, said he was part of the government's General Security apparatus and that they should come with him. When the men refused to go, the fighters responded with a spray of bullets, a hand grenade, and two RPGs to the upper floor. They decided to surrender and as Saraya and the others filed out, Dima and the others ran outside, crying and pleading that the men stay. One of the fighters pointed his rifle at Dima's chest and told her to go inside before he shot her. Later, Dima said, after the gunmen finished searching the house, their leader reassured her, 'Don't worry. We won't hurt them. In two hours — or by morning — they'll be back. I promise they'll be safe.' 'By then he had already killed them,' Dima said. After the gunmen left, others soon followed. Each time a new group came, they accused the family of hiding weapons and searched the house. Each time they looted: One fighter demanded the gold necklace on Dima's neck and the jewelry from the other women. Another asked for the keys to one of the cars downstairs. Yet another, in a fit of rage, threatened to rape Dima. By the time the last band of fighters arrived, it was 2:30 in the afternoon. They said they would execute everyone in the house, Dima said, but then one of the fighters said, 'Leave them. There are pretty women among them.' They again demanded jewelry or car keys, but Dima replied that there was nothing left to take. When the fighters went outside to continue looting, Dima and 14 other family members ran to a neighbor's house and locked the door, staying silent and hoping they wouldn't be noticed. 'We didn't dare go out to search for anyone. We were too terrified,' Dima said. That night, as videos of the killings — many of them gleefully taken by the gunmen themselves as they tortured and executed Druze — surfaced on social media, the Saraya family looked for signs of their loved ones. It wasn't till the next morning that someone came to the door and told them to come collect the bodies of their relatives. That task fell to another relative, Mutassem Jbaai. 'Each body had more than 50 bullet holes. There was blood everywhere. It was like they were mangled,' he said, wincing at the memory. The U.S. State Department said on Thursday it was having direct discussions with the Syrian government on Saraya's killing, and that it called for 'an immediate investigation,' according to department deputy spokesman Tommy Pigott. 'Hosam and his family deserve justice, and those responsible for this atrocity must be held accountable,' Pigott said. Yet among the Saraya family, few believe the Syrian government will do anything to bring justice. They point to earlier bouts of sectarian bloodshed that have gone unpunished. 'We can't live like this. When Assad fell, we had a bit of hope and gave them a chance,' said the U.S.-based relative. 'But as the saying goes, 'once a terrorist, always a terrorist.' '
