DETROIT (WXYZ) — A professional basketball player from Detroit returned home Saturday after what she describes as a harrowing escape from Iran amid deadly violence and mass anti-government protests.
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Taylor Jones, who has played for 17 different teams overseas since beginning her professional career in 2019, was playing for Abadan in Iran when the situation deteriorated rapidly.
"We had four more games until we transitioned into the playoffs," Jones said.
Any hopes of a championship run ended when protests in the country escalated, and the Iranian government cut off all internet service on January 8.
"Our WiFi began acting very shaky. Iran is known for not having good service, but it had never been that bad," Jones said.
Jones and her teammates, including other Americans, found themselves cut off from the outside world.
"I was shaking, my anxiety was at a thousand. I was trying to call my mom - it wouldn't go through," Jones said.
She eventually managed to get a signal because their hotel was close to the Iraqi border.
"I went to my other teammate's room, who was American. She's like, 'I just figured out I have one bar,' so I was like, 'Maybe if I sit in the corner of the room my phone will also pick up,'" Jones said.
The phone finally connected after picking up a signal from Iraqi cell towers.
After reaching her mother, Jones focused on finding a way home. Initial attempts to escape through Iraq were unsuccessful after she was denied entry at the border.
A team agent helped secure a flight to Dubai, but it meant flying out of Tehran.
"When you arrived there... oh, I was frantic. I was frantic. Obviously, I don't look like the rest. They're looking at four, five Americans walking. Their eyes are just like... we kept hearing them say 'Americans, Americans,'" Jones said.
Jones's mother, Fawn Day, was relieved to have her daughter back home.
"When she first texted me, she just said 'Mom,' and I knew something was going on. That's the code word for something is going on. I was just hoping what I was seeing on the news would not come her way," Day said.
This isn't the first time Jones has had to flee a dangerous situation. In January 2022, she was playing basketball in Ukraine when Russian troops began preparing for an invasion. She escaped just a day before the war started.
"I'm just really trying to find the words to process everything that I witnessed. Never gone through anything as traumatic as that. Obviously, I had to flee from Ukraine in 2022, but that experience was far easier going than this was, by far," Jones said.
Jones's professional career has taken her to Portugal, Bosnia, Puerto Rico, Ukraine, Finland, Iceland, Luxembourg, and Belarus before her most recent stint in Iran.
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