19 hours ago
How four children survived a plane crash that killed every adult on board
The wreckage of the plane was so mangled that when rescuers arrived, they couldn't immediately tell how many bodies were inside.
A Cessna 206 light aircraft had been taking four children and their mother from their home near Araracuara, in southern Colombia, to San José del Guaviare. But then the engine failed, and it nosedived deep into the Amazon rainforest on 1 May 2023.
When rescuers eventually found the plane two weeks later, three bodies were found: the children's mother, Magdalena Mucutuy, 33, pilot Hernando Murcia Morales and local indigenous leader Hermán Mendoza Hernández.
At the crash site, soldiers found a baby's bottle and some wild passion fruit bearing human bite marks. Suitcases had been rummaged through, suggesting eldest sibling Lesly, 13, had taken what she needed to lead Soleiny, 9, Tien Noriel, 4, and Cristin Neriman, 11 months, into the jungle.
In the two weeks that had passed, the children could have walked miles from the plane, and with their whereabouts unknown, a massive search operation was launched, led by the Colombian military and supported by local indigenous volunteers.
It wasn't a straightforward mission; it was the first time the military and indigenous groups had worked together on an official mission after 50 years of internal conflict.
According to survival expert Dave Connell, who has extensive knowledge of rainforests from expeditions in Laos, Thailand, Borneo and Papua New Guinea, it was also far from an easy environment to search.
The area is huge and inhospitable; a dense, uncharted jungle three times the size of Bogota, where soldiers were at risk of attack by FARC dissidents – a rebel guerrilla group that had been at war with the military since the 1960s.
'The jungle can be an utter nightmare. You can walk all day and only go 500 metres because you have to hack your way through the trees. It's full of insects, and everything is trying to either bite you or sting you or damage you in some way,' The former soldier explains.
'Before you know it, you've been bitten by a centipede, or you've got a hornet who has implanted a stinger right middle of your forehead. You could find yourself in a river of red fire ants, and then there's the snakes… it's a very brutal place.'
There were many threats facing the Mucutuy children, including wild animals, starvation, dehydration, infection and disease. The military wanted to get to them quickly, and every area of command was deployed across the massive area.
They hacked through the thick vegetation with machetes and chainsaws, working alongside the indigenous rescuers, led by Henry Guerro, a local volunteer who, like the children, was Huitoto.
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The military had technology. They played a recording of the children's grandmother's voice from a loudspeaker in a helicopter flying low over the jungle.
They deployed search lights and flares, and soldiers on the ground played the recording through their phones into a megaphone. They threw 10,000 flyers in Spanish and the Huitoto language from the chopper, asking the children to stay close to the water and stay still. And they sent elite Belgian Malinois rescue dog Wilson into the rainforest to hunt for the children until they were found.
The nation held its breath as each day the children's chances of survival dwindled.
But their indigenous background would have worked in their favour, Dave explains. 'In the jungle, there is food all around you. In any palm tree, for example, you pull the heart out and it's like the freshest salad; very nutritious and full of carbohydrates.
'They would have been very familiar with jungle foods, and the herbs and medicines that they needed.
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'I don't think they would have had that much difficulty in sustaining the things that they need to keep their physiology working. It's not like going into the desert or into the Arctic. The resources are there, if you know what you are looking for, which certainly Lesly, the older girl, would have.
'I don't think the actual physical act of survival would have been as hard for them as the fact that they had lost their mother.'
The children would have kept hydrated from springs, as opposed to the bigger tributaries, which would have carried the threat of caimans. 'And their gut biome would be very different from ours. So for you and I to go in there and drink that water like that without any form of purification, might be an issue, but for them it was probably fine.'
And while wild animals – jaguars especially – may have been a threat, especially if they could smell blood, the children would have been able to treat any injuries with the many plants containing disinfectant or antiseptic properties.
'The biggest hazard would have been bees. If they accidentally disturbed a swarm, that would be an issue because there are some species that are particularly vicious and sting you.'
The search went on for weeks; the military walking in rows, while the indigenous group took a different approach, tuning into their childish intuition to guide them. It worked; eventually, they found the children's tracks littered with the lid of a baby's bottle, a used diaper and a towel.
They found twigs chewed by human teeth and a camp where the children would have slept. But still no children. Rescuers started to doubt if the children could still be alive.
On the 39th day, the indigenous volunteers performed an ayahuasca ceremony, and Shaman Don Rubio drank the elixir, asking it to help find the children. The next day, he told rescuers they would find the children at 3pm.
It was to be the last day of the search, and helicopters were booked to take them out of the jungle that day. At 2pm, the children had still not been found, and the rescuers were about to leave. As they walked, one local volunteer, Nicolás Ordóñez Gomes, heard a child crying. Following the sound, the four volunteers located the four skinny children, hungry and frightened but otherwise okay.
They looked as if they wanted to run away, so Nicolás held out his arms and said 'family' and took the emaciated baby. Tien Noriel, who was also weak and close to death, told them his mother had died on the plane. Lesly later told her father that they had gone into the jungle after Magdalena told her children to leave and find help as she lay dying.
Lesly later told investigators that she knew she had to protect her brother and sisters: 'After the accident, I don't know how long I lay unconscious for. When I woke up, there was a lot of blood. It was very painful. I was crying and crying. My mother was making a lot of noise, then she stopped.
'Maybe if I had woken up earlier, I could have saved her. I pulled my sister from underneath my mother. I knew we couldn't stay. We had to abandon the plane to find more food and something to drink.
'My leg was hurting so much, and I could hardly stand or walk at all. I got all the drinks I had and dragged myself on my knees. I did that for the first 20 days we were lost. I knew I just had to keep going. My biggest worry the whole time was keeping baby Cristin alive. I knew that she needed more food than we did.
'My mother had taught me about fruits we could eat in the jungle, like milpesos. I made a fishing rod out of what I could find. With the rod, we were able to catch some fish. We ate the fish raw. It tasted horrible. More Trending
'We kept trying to follow the voice that we heard [from the helicopter], but it would fade. I would try to get my sisters and my brother to go to sleep each night. I didn't really sleep. One night in the jungle, we almost sat on a snake. I was able to kill it with a stick, though. Tien became so weak he could no longer stand on his own any more. One day I dreamt they would never find us.'
With the children safe, each rescuer carried a sibling through the bush on their back and onto a military hospital to be restored to health.
They are now being taken care of by Colombia's Institute for Family Welfare, where they are in regular contact with their family and receive therapy to cope with the traumatic experience.
The alliance was a historic first, and the rescue mission is one of the most significant events in Colombian history, with all the rescuers receiving a hero's welcome. However, there was one notable absence from the crew – rescue dog Wilson, who heartbreakingly never made it back from the jungle.
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