Safari Victim Tells of Her Struggle to Have a Child

Testifying Thursday in a civil lawsuit against Chatsworth-based Brendan Vacations Inc., a Southland woman recounted her struggles after losing her unborn baby when shot by a bandit in Africa in 2007, her recuperation and her subsequent attempts to have a child.

• Previously: Woman Struggles for Composure as She Describes Safari Attack

In her second day on the stand, Jacqueline Lutz said a doctor at a hospital in Nairobi, Kenya, gave her the news that her fetus did not survive the gunman's attack along a nature walk path.

"I was devastated," the 38-year-old commercial airlines pilot testified, struggling at times to maintain her composure. "The pain of hearing those words was worse than the bullet."

Lutz, her husband and his long-time friend, Long Island, N.Y.-resident Raymond Mollica, filed suit against Brendan Vacations in March 2009. They allege Brendan made numerous representations on its website that led them to believe everyone involved in their safari trip once they reached Africa was a Brendan employee.

The Redondo Beach couple and Mollica maintain they only learned later that Brendan delegated most aspects of the trip to third-party companies, including the ground tour operator.

Brendan Vacations has denied any wrongdoing. Defense attorneys say the company did not select the activities on the safari to Tanzania and did not employ the two nature walk guides who were with the Lutzes and Mollica when the bandits attacked them during their "Splendor in the Serengeti" tour in March 2007.

They also say the plaintiffs failed to read the tour package disclaimers and that they should have known the distinction between Brendan and the other companies.

Lutz said she and her 44-year-old husband met with Mollica and his then-fiancee, Celia Vergel DeDios, at their hotel near Arusha, Tanzania, the first night of the couples' vacation. She said they decided to take a nature walk and the next morning met the tour guides, Herman Kiriama and Charles Safari, before the two couples and a fifth tourist, a woman from Great Britain, embarked on the walk to Lake Duluti.

Lutz said the group was on a dirt trail when a man with a machete accosted them and demanded money. Kiriama tried to disarm the man, but a second bandit appeared with a gun and began firing, hitting her in the abdomen, Mollica in the left leg and Safari in the head, killing him.

After receiving word hours later in the Nairobi hospital that her fetus did not survive, Lutz said she then inquired about the gender.

"I wanted to know if it was a boy or a girl," she said. "They said it was a boy."

The doctors did have good news in that they believed her fallopian tubes and ovaries were not damaged, she said. But Lutz said her internal injuries prompted the Kenyan physicians to perform a colostomy. Getting used to dealing with her condition after returning to the United States more than a week later often proved difficult and embarrassing, she said.

The psychological aftermath from the attack also became apparent, Lutz said.

"When something like this happens to you, you look twice at everybody," she said. "You think you're invincible and can deal with all this yourself."

Lutz said she began getting therapy to deal with her own internal torment.

"On the inside I was dying, I was just empty," she said.

She said she also began having disagreements with her husband, Rg, who she said with good intentions tried to emphasize that she was mentally strong. She said she told him to listen to her concerns and try to understand what she was going through.

Lutz said she made repeated efforts to become pregnant in both the traditional way and through artificial insemination. She said she was frustrated each time.

"It's supposed to be a natural thing," she said. "When you can't do it, you start to doubt everything. Everywhere I looked there were pregnant women. I had friends with kids and I couldn't go to their homes."

Success finally came after a third attempt with in-vitro fertilization, she said. Initially pregnant with twins, she lost one of the fetuses, but gave birth to the other twin last December, she testified.

"I have this beautiful girl. I love every minute I spend with her," she said. "But I still think of my first child. It still makes me sad at times."

Lutz said she is not finished with her family planning.

"I want my daughter to have a sibling," she said. "But I'm not sure I can get pregnant the natural way."

Mollica and DeDios, who are now married, sat in the audience with Lutz's husband during her testimony.

— Bill Hetherman, City News Service