"There's so many details I just can't get into until I get home and feel safe, but at least I've made it this far," said Benzegala, who had come to Libya only three weeks ago to play on a government-run team backed by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's son, Saif.  "I'm just thankful to be alive," he told CNN. "Just unbelievable. ... Anything could have happened. There was no guarantee I was going to get out safely."  Even though he's on his way home to Ohio, he's still haunted by stories of those he left behind, including a teammate who was held at gunpoint by a mercenary one day as he tried to get to the airport.  A Libyan soldier was able to calm the mercenary down, Benzegala said.  "He definitely was in serious danger and probably would have been killed. ... The mercenary was very, very violent and aggressive; he just looked like he was itching to shoot somebody."  For Americans Erika and Franz Fearnley, the sound of protests and gunfire that kept getting closer and closer to their neighborhood just outside the Libyan capital ultimately forced them to make a dash for the airport in hopes of leaving the violence behind.  "The crowds sounded as if more and more people were joining in, (and) just hearing the gunfire and just knowing that people were probably losing their lives" finally made them pack up, Erika Fearnley told CNN's "Parker-Spitzer" on Thursday.  They and other Americans who have fled Libya's descent into chaos have harrowing tales of escaping the carnage.  As Benzegala ran out of food and money -- living off of a single bowl of spaghetti for the past two days -- he decided he had to take a chance and get to the airport to leave the country. It was a fateful decision by the former University of Tampa star point guard, so used to taking chances on the court but feeling out of his element in a foreign city under siege.
Sitting in a dark, abandoned sports complex with the constant crack of gunshots and the cries of angry protesters ringing in his head, Mounir Benzegala decided he had to leave the bloodshed in Libya