Nicole Lynn Mansfield, 33, was first identified by a Syrian television station, which broadcast images of her driver’s license photo. Mansfield is shown in the picture wearing an Islamic headscarf and listing her address in Flint, Michigan, according to the Detroit Free Press. The Syrian news report claimed she and British companions were shot by President Bashar Assad’s military.
Two FBI agents confirmed the report to Mansfield’s family back in Michigan, where they expressed disbelief over the news. The family confessed limited knowledge of the Arab immigrant she married, and who Mansfield divorced three years ago, and was unsure of when she went to Syria.
“I’m sick over it. I didn’t think she was [a terrorist], but god only knows,” Monica Mansfield Speelman, Nicole’s aunt, told the Free Press. “It bothered me that she converted to Islam and started wearing a headscarf.”
Mansfield was raised in the Baptist faith, her father working as a General Motors production worker. She became pregnant in high school but later earned her equivalency degree and moved onto community college. Mansfield worked for ten years at an old-age home and leaves behind an 18-year-old daughter.
“She has a heart of gold, but she was weak minded,” said her grandmother, Carole Mansfield. “I think she could have been brainwashed.”
