Kidnapped during a restaurant visit Victoria's Secret model kidnapped with her family in Brazil
Luciana Curtis visits her home country of Brazil with her husband and youngest daughter. A planned restaurant visit there ends dramatically: the model and her family are abducted.
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- Victoria's Secret model Luciana Curtis visits the Brazilian city of São Paulo with her husband and youngest daughter (11).
- A planned restaurant visit last Wednesday evening ends dramatically.
- According to CNN Brasil, the 47-year-old and her family were attacked outside the restaurant, abducted and held in a wooden hut for twelve hours.
She walked the catwalk for US lingerie label Victoria's Secret and did cosmetics advertising with singer Beyoncé Knowles: Brazilian model Luciana Curtis has already completed a number of sensational jobs in her career.
Today, the 47-year-old lives in New York City with her husband, photographer Henrique Gendre, and their two daughters.
A planned restaurant visit ended dramatically
A visit to her mother's home country turned into a nightmare for the family: last Wednesday evening, Curtis, her husband and their younger daughter had planned to go out for dinner at a restaurant in São Paulo, Brazil.
According to CNN Brasil, several men lay in wait for the family outside the restaurant and forced them at gunpoint to get back into their own car.
The kidnappers then took the family to Brasilândia, a favela northwest of São Paulo, where they were locked up in a wooden hut. There, the kidnappers forced Curtis and Gendre to reveal their bank details and stole tens of thousands of dollars.
The family is "emotionally devastated"
The Curtis-Gendre family's nightmare only ended the following day after the couple's older daughter (14) reported her parents and sister missing to a relative, who alerted the police.
While the authorities searched for the three missing people, the perpetrators managed to escape. As a result, residents of the favela brought the mother, father and daughter to safety.
A spokeswoman for Way Model Management, the agency with which Luciana Curtis is under contract, told CNN Brasil: "The family has been released and is safe and sound." According to the local police, everyone involved is "emotionally shaken".
