Half-human and half-animal

'Half-animal' woman may be long-missing daughter, parents say
Created on : 01/18/2007 19:55 (PRI)
Phnom Penh (Cambodia), Jan 18 A woman who disappeared in the jungles of northeastern Cambodia as a child has apparently been found after living in the wild for 19 years, police and a man claiming to be her father said today.

The woman - believed to be Rochom P'ngieng, who would now be 27 years old - cannot speak any intelligible language, so details of her saga have been difficult to confirm.

"When I saw her, she was naked and walking in a bending- forward position like a monkey ... She was bare-bones skinny," said Sal Lou, who says he is her father.

"She was shaking and picking up grains of rice from the ground to eat. Her eyes were red like tigers' eyes," Sal Lou, 45, told The Associated Press by telephone from Oyadao district in Rattanakiri province, where the woman was found last Saturday.

Rochom P'ngieng, then 8 years old, disappeared in 1988 when she was herding buffalo in a remote jungle area, said Chea Bunthoeun, a deputy provincial police chief. The province is about 325 kilometres northeast of Cambodia's capital.

Mao San, police chief of Oyadao district, described the woman as "half-human and half-animal." Sal Lou, a village policeman who is a member of the Pnong ethnic minority, said he recognised his daughter by a scar on her right arm, a result of a cut from a knife she played with when she was young.

The woman was discovered this month after a villager noticed that food disappeared from a lunch box he left at a site near his farm, Chea Bunthoeun said.

"He decided to stake out the area and then spotted a naked human being, who looked like a jungle person, sneaking in to steal his rice," he said. The villager gathered some friends and they managed to catch the woman on January 13.