Mykensie Martin, 17, an American exchange student who was missing since last weekend, was found safe today in Brazil. Martin was taken to a police station in Salvador, in the Brazilian northeastern state of Bahia, according to Lt. Alexandre Silva of the federal police in Bahia.
Silva told AP that Martin was unharmed but could not provide additional information.
Martin told the Globo TV news network she arrived in Salvador on Tuesday. Someone tried to rob her shortly after she arrived, but Martin said she was helped by a waiter, Globo reported. The report said she had already contacted her host family.
The teen arrived Thursday afternoon at a federal police station in Salvador, said Rodrigo Koble, an agent with Interpol at the station.
The high school senior from Oregon "seems stressed, but there’s nothing physically wrong with her that we can tell," he said in a telephone interview.
She was talking on the telephone with an FBI agent, he added.
Koble said he had no details on how or why she ended up in Salvador, far from her apparent initial destination of Brasília.
American Embassy spokesman John Wilcock said he could not immediately confirm the reports that the teen had been found safe in Salvador.
Martin was last seen Sunday hitchhiking toward Brasília, Brazil’s capital, which lies in the interior of Latin America’s largest country.
Her disappearance sparked international alarm, and the U.S. Embassy on Thursday distributed thousands of fliers around Brasilia and in Unai, the small city 130 kilometers (80 miles) away where she was spotted trying hitchhike.
This article appeared originally in Pravda – www.pravda.ru.
