Burleson Family Anxious After Russian Soldiers Kidnap Missionary Son In Ukraine
BURLESON, Texas (CBSDFW.COM) - A Burleson family hasn't heard from their son in nearly a week after Russian soldiers took him from his home in Ukraine.
Dmitry Bodyu is a Ukrainian-American pastor at Word of Life Church in Melitópol, a city now under Russian control.
His mother Zena said she received a message from her granddaughter this week, that soldiers had taken the 50-year-old, along with phones and computers from the home.
They came back two days later, returning some of the items, according to Esther Bodyu-Ogawa, one of Bodyu's daughters who lives in Hawaii. They accepted extra clothes and a toothbrush to take to him.
"They just keep saying they will let him go like in a few days, but then a few days goes by, and he's still there," she said.
Bodyu-Ogawa said the soldiers told her mother they were going through his online videos of sermon, listening to what the pastor had been saying.
Bodyu is a U.S. citizen whose family left the Soviet Union and moved to Burleson when he was a teenager in 1990. After a few years in North Texas, he returned to Ukraine to work as a missionary.
He returns to North Texas usually once a year his father Sergey said, to attend a conference and see family. He was last in in the U.S. in the fall, but stayed in Ukraine as war approached because of his work there, his mother and father said.
There have been other reports of kidnappings in Melitópol, including the mayor of the city this month, who was released after a few days.
