The four Indigenous children who survived for weeks after their plane crashed have shared limited but harrowing details of the ordeal with their family members.
The four Indigenous children who after their plane crashed have shared limited but harrowing details of their ordeal with their family, including that their mother survived the crash for days before she died.
The kids, aged 13, 9 and 4 years and 11 months, are expected to remain for at least two weeks in a hospital receiving treatment after their rescue Friday, but some are already speaking and wanting to do more than lying on a bed, according to family members.
Manuel Ranoque, father of the two youngest children, told reporters outside the hospital Sunday that the oldest of the four surviving children — 13-year-old Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy — told him their mother was alive for about four days after the plane crashed on May 1 in the Colombian jungle.
Ranoque said before she died, the mother likely would have told them: « go away, » apparently asking them to leave the wreckage site to survive. He provided no more details.
Fidencio Valencia, a child’s uncle, told media outlet Noticias Caracol the children were starting to talk and one of them said they hid in tree trunks to protect themselves in a jungle area filled with snakes, animals and mosquitoes. He said they were exhausted.
« They at least are already eating, a little, but they are eating, » he said after visiting them at the military hospital in Bogota, Colombia. On Saturday, Defense Minister Iván Velásquez had said the children were being rehydrated and couldn’t eat food yet.
Later, Valencia provided new details of the children’s recovery two days after the rescue: « They have been drawing. Sometimes they need to let off steam.
