Kidnapped officer found safe

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan – A U.S. Air Force officer who disappeared earlier this week in Kyrgyzstan was found alive late Friday, reportedly telling people who helped her that she had been kidnapped, officials said.

Maj. Jill Metzger, 33, was located by Kyrgyz law enforcement agents who informed authorities at the U.S. air base at the airport in Bishkek, the Central Asian nation’s capital, base spokeswoman Capt. Anna Carpenter said.

Kyrgyz Deputy Interior Minister Omurbek Suvanaliyev said Metzger, 33, knocked on the door of a house on the outskirts of the capital shortly before midnight and told its residents that she had been kidnapped.

Metzger said she had been abducted by three young men and a woman in a minibus and held in a rural area 30 miles from Bishkek, Suvanaliyev said. He cited local police in Kant, where he said she approached the first house she came to. He said she looked exhausted and her hair was dyed.

That account differed somewhat from one given by Metzger’s father-in-law, Kelly Mayo, who said in a telephone interview from Colorado Springs, Colo., that Metzger was found on the side of the road with her head shaved. “I know she’s coherent, and whoever had her let her go,” he said, adding that she had been beaten.

Suvanaliyev said the people who took Metzger in when she knocked on their door called the police.

Mayo said the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations notified the family Friday but gave few details. He said his son, Air Force Capt. Joshua Mayo, was elated after being told about his wife.

“I can’t even describe it. He’s just beside himself, just unbelievable joy,” Mayo said.

Metzger, a former resident of Henderson, N.C., was serving a four-month stint at the base with the 376th Air Expeditionary Wing. Her normal duty station is Moody Air Force Base in Georgia as a member of the 347th Mission Support Squadron. She had been scheduled to land back at her U.S. base Friday. The U.S. military has maintained an air base at Kyrgyzstan’s main civilian airport since 2001, backing operations in nearby Afghanistan.

Military officials said the newlywed Metzger, dressed in blue jeans and a sweater, vanished during a shopping trip to a tourist hotspot in Bishkek, where she was searching for souvenirs to bring home to her family. The so-called “cultural tours” are common for off-duty personnel.

Interior Ministry spokesman Nurdin Jangarayev said on Thursday that Metzger and another U.S. servicewoman were recorded on a security camera Tuesday afternoon as they entered TsUM, Bishkek’s main department store. She separated from her companion three minutes later, Jangarayev said.