(Credits: Asia Pacific Press via ViralPres)
An adolescent used all his instincts to survive in the tough jungles of Thailand when he was saved after stumbling across a distant Buddhist temple.
Lawrence Stallard Honour, 19, emerged looking emaciated, dishevelled but unharmed after vanishing greater than two weeks ago near the border of lawless Myanmar.
He walked over 150 miles following the Mekong River, surviving only by eating ants and tree bark, based on local reports.
Lawrence’s mother, Gulnara, expressed her deep gratitude to police, soldiers, and volunteers who worked to search out her son alive.
‘I’m thankful beyond words,’ she said. ‘He’s protected now, and that’s all that matters. I hope this story warns others to watch out.’
The pc expert was last seen leaving a hotel and walking into the forest on September 27, sparking a frantic search by Thai police near the border.
Police colonel Santi Phithaksakul, superintendent of Sangkhla Buri Police Station, said he was notified on Monday, October 13, that the boy was found alive on the Wat Tham Sawan Bandan temple.
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He said: ‘The interrogation revealed that Mr Lawrence intended to go to Payathonzu in Karen State, Myanmar.
‘He had planned to undergo the Three Pagodas border pass on September 27, however the checkpoint had already closed.’
Immigration Police reported that, on the identical day, Lawrence attempted to cross to Myanmar, while talking on the phone.
When told the border was closed, Lawrence left before returning to attempt to climb the fence to cross the border again.
Police forced him onto a bus to a close-by resort but he was unable to ascertain in as he had no money for a room.
He charged his phone before setting off – only to lose his way in a forest as darkness fell and vanished.
His mother, a Russian-Thai national, told police that she ‘feared’ her son, ‘a quiet boy’ with advanced computer skills, could have fallen victim to scammers, attempting to lure him to Myanmar to hitch a gang.
She filed a missing person report at Pattaya City Police Station after he ‘vanished without notice’.
Shortly after, she checked his email account and noticed unusual activity traced to Sangkhlaburi, greater than 400 kilometres away.
Panicking, she feared her son had been lured by a fake job offer at a call centre from criminal syndicates in Myanmar.
The military was posted to each border crossing with missing posters of Lawrence’s British passport handed out to attempt to find the teenager.
Finally, two weeks after vanishing, villagers from Ban Phra Chedi Sam Ong reported that a foreign man had been seen living quietly at Wat Tham Kaew Sawan Bandan, a powerful hilltop Buddhist temple known for sheltering travellers.
Soldiers rushed to the tranquil spot and located Lawrence ‘alone and disoriented, but physically unharmed’.
How 4 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 what number of bodies were inside.
A Cessna 206 light aircraft had been taking 4 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 May 1, 2023.
When rescuers eventually found the plane two weeks later, three bodies were found: the kids’s mother, Magdalena Mucutuy, 33, pilot Hernando Murcia Morales and native indigenous leader Hermán Mendoza Hernández.
On the crash site, soldiers found a baby’s bottle and a few wild passion fruit bearing human bite marks. Suitcases had been rummaged through, suggesting eldest sibling Lesly, 13, had taken what she needed to steer Soleiny, 9, Tien Noriel, 4, and Cristin Neriman, 11 months, into the jungle.
Read more here…
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