NATCHEZ — The Natchez Police Department launched an aggravated assault investigation Friday after an assault victim was discovered walking, bloodied, beaten and wearing handcuffs on Martin Luther King Jr. Street shortly after midnight.

The victim later told police he was basically taken hostage in his own car, handcuffed, beaten, threatened with a gun and driven away until he unlocked the passenger door and jumped to his escape from the moving car.

An Adams County sheriff’s deputy reportedly spotted the victim, a 60 year-old man, at 12:33 a.m. on the street and drove him to Natchez Regional Medical Center upon noticing the victim’s injuries, a NPD report says.

When police questioned the victim from the hospital, he said the suspect was in the back of his truck when the victim got in his vehicle after leaving his girlfriend’s house on Sgt. Henry L. Brown Drive.

According to the report, the following occurred:

“The suspect began to strike (the victim) in the face with his fist, and when the complainant began to fight back, (the victim) stated a gun was put (against) his head and he was told to not look behind him,” the report said.

The victim said the suspect then placed him in handcuffs and pushed him into the passenger’s seat and began to drive the victim’s truck.

The truck then proceeded, the victim reportedly said, down Pilgrim Boulevard and turned right on Martin Luther King Jr. Street at which point the victim unlocked the door and jumped out of his car by a cemetery.

“The victim said he did not know which way the truck went; he just ran into the woods,” the report says.

The deputy who found the victim later told police the victim’s truck was found in the county in a gully on Sedgefield Road, the report said.

Police named a potential suspect in the report, but Mullins would not release the name publicly, saying investigators were still working on the case, and no arrest had been made.

Mullins would not say if the victim knew the suspect. Investigators interviewed subjects about the incident Friday afternoon, Mullins said.