X Factor sensation Jeanette Akua held hostage at gun point!!

Singer Jeanette Akua has told how she feared she was going to die after an armed gang kidnapped her and held her at gunpoint for two terrifying days.

The X Factor star was handing out flyers in a dangerous area of her native Johannesburg, South Africa, when they were dragged off the street into a room by the thugs who demanded hundreds of pound in ransom.

Jeanette, 21 – a member of girl group Miss Dynamix – said: “I thought they were going to kill us. In South Africa people are murdered for less than 2p. You hear about these stories but you never think it will happen to you.”

Jeanette, now a beauty consultant in London, was 18 at the time and had taken a part-time job with an agency dishing out flyers in the notorious Randburg district.

She went there without telling her parents. They were at a taxi rank when the gunmen swooped.

Speaking of how her horrific ordeal began, Jeanette said: “Taxi ranks are a bad place to be, a lot of crime happens and I hadn’t told my parents I had got the job. I was young and naive.

“This man came over, grabbed my hand and yanked my hair. He was shouting but I didn’t understand the language he was speaking. When I answered him in English it only made him more angry. He was asking for my permit, saying I shouldn’t be there.

“I was screaming and crying because I could sense something bad was going to happen. Then the man and his two friends dragged us into this little room in the taxi rank building.

“They made us sit in the corner, refused to give us any water or let us use the phones. They had guns. My friend understood them a bit. They were saying, ‘This is a gold mine for us.’ They could tell we came from good backgrounds.

“They were calling us ‘cheese girl’ which means little rich girl. I honestly thought I was going to die. That kind of thing happens in South Africa.”

The yobs finally freed Jeanette and her friend after negotiating a £400 ransom with the agency that employed them.

She said: “I was so traumatised I could hardly speak. I am lucky to be alive.”

But she got no sympathy from police. When she went to report the incident, they shrugged off her ordeal.

Jeanette said: “They said, ‘did they shoot you?’ I said no and they just laughed in our face.”

But the kidnapping made her more determined to follow her dreams of becoming a pop star. She left South Africa for London seven months later.(mirror)