A teenage kidnap victim has was found naked and sealed inside a bin bag on a landfill site - but still alive.
María Ángela Olguín had been missing from Mexico City for three days before the unnamed passerby found her because of hearing "someone crying in a landfill next to a parking lot."
The 16-year-old told police she had been held captive with "many other young girls" and was very confused and disorientated when she was found, it has been reported.
She went missing on January 19 as she waited for her mother outside a toilet at the Indies Verdes metro station in northern Mexico City.
CCTV footage allegedly of Ms Olguín’s captor from outside the underground station shows a girl–believed to be Olguín– standing outside of the bathrooms when a man approaches her and appears to force her to walk before disappearing behind a white minivan.
María’s older sister Elizabeth said: “From the videos, it is very clear that my sister didn’t leave (on) her own… She was taken by a man that grabbed her by her arm. The cameras didn’t get what happened next.”
Vicente Ramirez, director of the Nezahualcóyotl Municipal Police, told reporters: “The girl said that at the place where she was being held were many other girls and women, many underage, but she couldn’t say more."
However, on Thursday, Mexico City Attorney General’s Office reported that Ms Olguín "left of her own free will".
"The minor did not present any damage and that her absence was not related to the commission of any crime," Ulises Lara, spokesman for the Prosecutor's Office said at a press conference.
It is still unclear why Olguín was abducted and then released, however, Ms Olguín's family say she is in a stable state.
Mexico’s National Missing Persons Commission reports that, on average, seven women are reported missing in the Central American country every day, with more than 70 per cent of the reports concentrated in the area where María was abducted.
But details around the cases are often murky.
Nuevo León, a state in the northeast region of Mexico, authorities first called Debanhi Escobar’s [no relation to druglord Pablo Escobar] death last year an accident, saying she fell into the water tank at a dodgy hotel.
But after pressure from her family and activists, a secondary autopsy made by an independent forensic laboratory revealed she died from suffocation at a different place than where her body was found.
