A woman who went miss­ing on her way to a job inter­view has been found alive in a for­est after sev­en days.

Diana Pena left her home in Mex­i­co City by car on April 24 but nev­er arrived at her appoint­ment. After an exten­sive search, the 33-year-old was mirac­u­lous­ly found a week lat­er, extreme­ly dis­tressed and dehy­drat­ed in wood­lands in San­ta Maria Ahua­cati­t­lan — 64 kilo­me­tres from where she dis­ap­peared.

A touch­ing pho­to tak­en just moments after she was res­cued shows Ms Pena hug­ging her broth­er while wrapped in a blan­ket. In the image, which emerged on social media, a woman can also be seen caress­ing her hair as a police offi­cer stands near­by.

Police, who believe Ms Pena could have been drugged and sex­u­al­ly assault­ed, say the 33-year-old was in a “wor­ry­ing state” in the very remote loca­tion when she was found by sol­diers draft­ed for the search.

Mum has no memory of what happened

She was unable to tell offi­cers where she had been and had no mem­o­ry of what had hap­pened to her. The last thing she recalls, local media reports, was a man approach­ing her car and telling her she had a flat tyre.

Police are inves­ti­gat­ing if she was heav­i­ly drugged and abused, and Ms Pena is under­go­ing phys­i­cal exam­i­na­tions in hos­pi­tal. Her fam­i­ly raised the alarm when she failed to col­lect her daugh­ter from school on the day she van­ished. Then they dis­cov­ered the mum had not even turned up to her job inter­view.

Police lat­er found her car aban­doned in the mid­dle of the road with the win­dows open. They say they have not ruled out any line of inquiry. So far, there have been no arrests in con­nec­tion with the case. The inves­ti­ga­tion is ongo­ing.

Killings of women have increased in recent years in Mex­i­co, ris­ing from 977 cas­es in 2020 to 1,015 in 2021. And those were just cas­es clas­si­fied as “fem­i­ni­cides” a legal term used in Mex­i­co when women are killed because of their gen­der. Killings of women over­all are much high­er.

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Newsflash/Australscope with AP

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