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Woman kidnapped in Virginia recounts high-speed chase: 'Can I call my kids and say goodbye?'

'In a car that is going 155 mph, you can't see anything. You can't see street signs, you can't read any of that, so I had no idea where we were'
Chesapeake Kidnapping
Crashed car in North Carolina
Joshua Stokes
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CHESAPEAKE, Va. — The woman kidnapped by her ex-boyfriend in Chesapeake last Sunday and driven to North Carolina against her will is telling her story of what happened during that police chase.

"Every time we got near people I would say like 'God please, please don't hurt anybody else,'" Heather Oliver, the victim in Sunday's incident, said.

Oliver said she's thankful no one else was injured on Sunday after she said her former boyfriend, Joshua Stokes, kidnapped her from a parking lot in a Greenbrier shopping center in her own purple Dodge Challenger.

Crashed Challenger

"I kept saying like 'what are you doing, where are you going,'" Oliver said. "I was like 'please just pull over or just drive to my house, or anything.'"

Oliver said she had no idea they were on the way to North Carolina or where they were even going because of how fast the car was moving.

"If you have ever been in a car that is going 155 mph, you can't see anything," Oliver said. "You can't see street signs, you can't read any of that, so I had no idea where we were."

Fearing for her life, Oliver called 911 discretely so as not to try and alert Stokes.

Joshua Stokes

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"I put my phone in the door, I had the phone on silent, and I turned the volume down so he couldn't hear them talking," Oliver said.

She said knowing police were on the phone, she was describing what car they were in with hopes law enforcement would be able to ping her location.

Oliver said a police officer eventually called her phone and asked if she was being held against her will.

She told the officer yes.

Oliver said at that point Stokes was alerted and told her to turn her phone off.

"I just said, 'Can I at least, can I at least call my kids and say goodbye?'" Oliver said.

She said at one point police tried doing a pit maneuver on their car but Stokes was able to avoid it.

Dodge Challenger

Oliver said Stokes had recently been going through things after losing custody of his two kids.

She said during the chase Stokes said police were not going to catch him and that he was ready to die.

"He was ready to die, and he said it, and he said goodbye to his dad," Oliver said. "He called his dad and said goodbye to him."

She said the next thing that happened was a car hitting them from the front and back.

"I don't remember anything after that, I woke up in the hospital," Oliver said.

Watch previous coverage: Virginia Beach man accused of kidnapping woman allegedly violated protective order before

Virginia Beach man accused of kidnapping woman allegedly violated restraining order before

Oliver said she woke up to a black eye, a broken rib, and bruising on her lungs.

She was released from the hospital on Thursday and is returning home with help from her mother.

Stokes is being charged with first-degree kidnapping and is due back in court in North Carolina on Dec. 1.

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