Disabled teen Kayla Kendrigan reveals horror of alleged kidnap, torture and being thrown from bridge
A DISABLED teenager, who was allegedly tortured at the hands of four former friends before being thrown off a bridge, said she didn’t think she would survive the ordeal.
NSW
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A DISABLED teenager, who was allegedly tortured at the hands of four former friends before being thrown off a bridge, said she didn’t think she would survive the ordeal.
Police allege Kayla Kendrigan the 19-year-old woman — who was born with a rare birth defect which left her without her left lower arm — was forced into the boot of a car in Ambarvale last month, after being led to believe she was staying the night at a friend’s house.
“I called dad, I was just scared and just wanted him. I was just thinking: ‘what are they going to do to me, why are they doing this, what did I ever do to them’,” she told A Current Affair on Tuesday.
The ordeal is believed to have started after Ms Kendrigan called one of the four charged over the attack a “dog.”
Ian Kendrigan said watching video footage of his daughter trying to contact him from the back seat while she simultaneously pleaded for mercy from her abductors was too much to bear.
“It killed me inside hearing her screaming and crying and calling for me,” he said.
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The teenager was allegedly driven about 50km north to a house in Whalan where she was tied to a chair, bound, blindfolded, and bashed with a bat, burned with cigarettes, punched, kicked, stabbed and had her hair hacked off.
Police further allege she was then put back into the boot with a gag over her mouth, and driven to Windsor Bridge where she pleaded with her attackers not to push her over, because she couldn’t swim.
Ms Kendrigan told ACA she was pushed off the bridge and fell 20 metres into the freezing river below — forcing her to make a frantic life-and-death swim to shore.
“I had stab wounds at the time — they were burning and I was just weak to the point where I just laid in the water for a couple of minutes and kept kicking my legs,” she said.
“I kept kicking, kicking, kicking and stopping and then rolling over and seeing how far it was to get to land, and kept just laying on my back — kicking, kicking, kicking, until I got to land.”
Exhausted and shivering she walked 15 minutes to find help, eventually finding a home where a man quickly wrapped a blanket around her, bundled her inside and alerted police.
“I just can’t thank him enough — the things that he did for me, he just took me into that house, let me have something to drink and just did everything he could,” the teen said.
Mr Kendrigan broke down when he recalled seeing his daughter laying battered and bruised in a hospital bed.
“There is my daughter lying there, face all smashed up, crying — I didn’t recognise her at all, it (her face) was like a balloon,” he said.
Two of Kayla’s alleged attackers, Brooke Browne, 19, and Matthew Lewthwaite, 22, were refused bail in Penrith Local Court last week and charged with attempted murder and kidnapping among a raft of other charges.
They will appear in the same court next month.
The 17-year-old girl and the 16-year-old boy, who are facing the same charges, were also refused bail.