It sounds more like a scene out of a movie than real life: A kidnapped man in the back of a van taken on a wild ride.
A Fort Worth man said it happened to him.
“I'm still shaken up,” said Erik Santiago.
Santiago told NBC 5 he was at a Fort Worth motel with Takim Peden, a man he was dating, but that Peden wouldn't let him leave for work.
“It started off in an argument, from an argument to a fist fight to then not knowing if I'm going to get out of the hotel room alive,” recalled Santiago.
The fight, he claimed, spilled into the parking lot.
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While on the phone with 911, Santiago said he jumped in the back of his cargo van.
“As soon as I got in the van, he took off. He got in the van and started driving,” said Santiago.
Fort Worth police released the 911 recordings of the chaotic ride from Fort Worth to Dallas.
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“Please help me. This guy is going crazy. He's driving crazy,” Santiago said on the recording.
He said desperation set in when his phone died.
“I took my polo shirt off, and I started waving it out the back of the window because people started waving at me because as I'm waiving out the back window, they're just thinking I'm saying hi, and so I took off my shirt. That's how desperate I got,” said Santiago.
Several drivers called 911.
"The guy in the back just opened up the back door, and I think he may be trying to get out of the van,” one driver says on a recorded 911 call.
It ended in southern Dallas when Santiago said other drivers who called 911 made the van swerve off an exit ramp.
Santiago said he used the opportunity to rush through the cargo door, which separates the back of the van from the front, and punched Peden.
He said it caused Peden to crash the van. Peden was placed in handcuffs, Santiago said, by a law enforcement officer who happened to be one of the drivers who called 911.
“Honestly I was relieved but still to this day I'm still in shock, like yesterday I almost had a panic attack,” said Santiago.
Santiago said he's sharing his story to raise awareness about the potential dangers of dating someone you meet online and to serve as an eye-opener about domestic violence.
“Never think it won't happen to you because in a million years, I didn't think I'd be held against my will in the back of my own van,” said Santiago.
Peden is charged with aggravated kidnapping and failing to register as a sex offender.
As of Tuesday evening, he remained in the Tarrant County jail.