TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (WIAT) – What started as a stranger asking for a cigarette quickly turned into a matter of life and death for Tina Williams.

“I was scared to turn around because I thought he might shoot me in my back,” said Williams, a cashier at the Quick Stop in Duncanville, just outside Tuscaloosa.

On Tuesday morning, Williams was taking her morning smoke break and enjoying a cup of coffee almost an hour into her shift at the Quick Stop in Duncanville. She sat on a makeshift bench when a truck pulled up.

“He just didn’t look like that type of person,” Williams said.

The man was later identified as Christopher Steven Herring, although at the time, Williams did not know him.

“Whenever I went to hand him the cigarette, he grabbed my arm and that’s when he pulled the gun up and started pointing it at my face,” she said.

For 10 minutes, Williams sat next to Herring in the car, all while he had a hand around her wrist and a finger on the trigger.

“I wouldn’t let him out of the car because I knew if he got out, he could have more advantage over me,” she said. “I needed to keep him in.”

Williams pleaded for him to put his gun down and let her go. Eventually, she managed to escape and call 911. Deputies from the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff’s Office arrived within minutes.

“I believe in God,” she said. “I think he was with me.”

Herring, 39, was later caught and charged with second-degree kidnapping.

Herring is being held at the Tuscaloosa County Jail and is awaiting a bond hearing.