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This story originally appeared in the Jackson Free Press. It was added to the Mississippi Free Press website in 2025.
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AP is reporting: “In a daring escape, American hostage Thomas Hamill pried open the doors of the house where he was being held late Sunday morning and ran a half-mile to a military convoy that was passing by, officials and his wife said. Insurgents attacked U.S. forces across Iraq, killing 11 Americans.

“Hamill, 43, of Macon, Miss., identified himself to the U.S. soldiers, then led them back to his Iraqi captors, two of whom were captured. Hamill, a truck driver for a Halliburton Corp. subsidiary, escaped more than three weeks after being abducted April 9 by gunmen who blasted the convoy he was driving on the outskirts of Baghdad.”

Founding Editor Donna Ladd is a writer, journalist and editor from Philadelphia, Miss., a graduate of Mississippi State University and later the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where she was an alumni award recipient in 2021. She writes about racism/whiteness, poverty, gender, violence, journalism and the criminal justice system. She contributes long-form features and essays to The Guardian when she has time, and was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Jackson Free Press. She co-founded the statewide nonprofit Mississippi Free Press with Kimberly Griffin in March 2020, and the Mississippi Business Journal named her one of the state's top CEOs in 2024. Read more at donnaladd.com, follow her on Twitter and Instagram at @donnerkay and email her at donna@mississippifreepress.org.