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Kidnapped Teen Found Alive Inside Plastic Bag at Garbage Dump

A woman holds the message "We want to be alive" during a silent march to remember murdered women and demand justice for them in Mexico City, Sunday, Sept. 8, 2019.

Three days after she’d been kidnapped, 16-year-old María Ángela Olguín was found naked inside a black plastic bag in a landfill in the outskirts of Mexico City. And in further horror, Olguín told officers she was locked in an unknown place with a number of other girls. 

Olguín was allegedly grabbed on Jan. 19 as she waited for her mother outside the restrooms of a subway station in Mexico City. Her older sister, Elizabeth, told local media that an unknown man had taken her by force to a commercial stand before disappearing in the middle of the crowd, according to footage from the subway security cameras. 

Videos by VICE

“From the (security) videos it is very clear that my sister didn’t leave (on) her own… She was taken by a man that grabbed her from her arm. The cameras didn’t get what happened next,” Olguín’s sister told local media

Authorities have not yet identified anyone as the suspect, and footage of him is blurry and provides few details.

Another video allegedly of Olguín’s captor was made public on Monday night. The security camera footage from outside the subway 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. 

Rocío Bustamante, Olguín’s mother, along with dozens of women in Mexico City, searched for Olguín and went out to the streets to ask the government for help to find her. 

Three days after she was abducted, Olguín was found alive by neighbors on Jan. 22 in the outskirts of Mexico State inside a black plastic bag. She was naked and had her hands and feet tied, and was “very disoriented,”according to local authorities. 

“I heard someone crying in a landfill next to a parking lot,” the woman who found her told local news

Olguín was confused about where she was and could only say she had “been kidnapped,” the woman said. 

After authorities arrived and helped Olguín get medical attention, they asked her about the place she was being held but due to her disorientation, she couldn’t say.

“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,” the chief of police in Nezahualcóyotl, where Olguín was found, told El Universal in an interview

It is still unclear why Olguín was abducted and then released, and authorities have not yet made any apprehensions on the case. Olguín is stable and still under medical observation, according to her family. 

In Mexico, seven women go missing every day and more than 70 percent of them are concentrated in Mexico State, Morelos, Jalisco, and Nuevo León, according to Mexico’s National Missing Persons Commission. 

In November 2022, 27-year-old Fernanda López’ body was found lying on the side of a road near Mexico City. She was identified by family members as Ariadna Fernanda López, who had been at a bar in Mexico City partying with her friends the night before. 

In a similar situation, Nuevo León state authorities first called Debanhi Escobar’s death an accident, saying she fell into the water tank at a sketchy motel. But after pressure from her family and activists, a later autopsy made by an independent forensic laboratory revealed she died from suffocation at a different place than where her body was found.