When Missouri man Travis Timmerman stopped talking with his family for seven months, a Syrian prison was the last place they thought he’d be.
Syrian officials captured him earlier this year entering the country on foot during a Christian pilgrimage to Damascus, the Springfield News-Leader reported.
Timmerman was freed along with thousands of others after the overthrow of now-former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad earlier this month.
“My door was busted down, it woke me up,” Timmerman told CBS News. “I thought the guards were still there, so I thought the warfare could have been more active than it ended up being … Once we got out, there was no resistance, there was no real fighting.”
The 29-year-old wandered barefoot days after his release before being discovered on Dec. 12 by a local whom Timmerman had asked for water.
The local shared a now-viral video online, which quickly drew media attention, NBC News reported.
🚨 BREAKING: US citizen Pete Travis Timmerman freed by the Syrian rebels from Assad’s prison near Damascus.
Travis went missing in Budapest, Hungary in June of this year. pic.twitter.com/bqTxz2FfYq— Igor Sushko (@igorsushko) December 12, 2024
He was initially mistaken by some for the missing 43-year-old journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared in Syria more than a decade ago.
Was the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad good for American interests?
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Timmerman’s family in Urbana, Missouri, knew when he left in May that he would be visiting Eastern Europe to travel, write and learn more about God.
While overseas, Timmerman would call three times a week, his mother Stacey Collins Gardiner said.
Then something changed.
“Called me end of May and says, ‘Mom, I’m going to be somewhere where I won’t have no internet.’ And I said, ‘How long, a week or two?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know, but I’ll give you a call,’” Gardiner said. “And that’s all I know.”
The Missouri State Highway Patrol declared Timmerman missing from Budapest, Hungary, on May 28.
His family wouldn’t know what happened until seven months later, when Missouri law enforcement contacted the U.S. Embassy in Hungary to discover Timmerman was in Lebanon, according to NBC News.
“I had happy tears,” Gardiner said after learning her son was alive.
“It was a relief to find out he was still alive, because he’s my baby,” she said.
“I’m so happy,” says the mother of Travis Timmerman, a U.S. man freed in Syria. Timmerman had crossed into Syria in May on a religious pilgrimage through the mountains.https://t.co/qfhHh34vMB pic.twitter.com/J8MjPrGBo4
— Sky News (@SkyNews) December 13, 2024
Timmerman told NBC News that he had “been reading the Scripture a lot” before crossing the mountains from Lebanon into Syria.
He said that his captors treated him fine.
“I was fed well, I always had water. The only difficulty was not being able to go to the bathroom” regularly, he told NBC News.
Kayle Owens, a classmate and teammate of Timmerman’s from high school, said that when friends learned that he was missing, they prayed.
“It truly is a Christmas miracle,” Owens said. “We’ve been praying tirelessly for his safe return, and those prayers have been answered.”
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