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More than a dozen people vanished two weeks ago after following a woman into the Andes Mountains when she told them she received a revelation from the Virgin Mary
By ADRY TORRES FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 17:09 EDT, 7 September 2022 |
Up to 20 people, including five children, remain missing in Venezuela after going on a spiritual retreat led by a woman who says the Virgin Mary told her the world was about to end.
Rosa García, 57, is said to have initially persuaded as many as 40 people in the Táchira town of La Grita to join on her trip to Juan Pablo Peñaloza National Park on August 22, according to La Nacion newspaper.
García allegedly told the group that they would be having a spiritual encounter with God or the Virgin Mary at an unknown area in the park that is located along the border of the western states of Táchira and Mérida.
They were expected to return Thursday and were reported missing later that day after they failed to show up at their homes.
Authorities in Venezuela are searching for more than a dozen people who have been reported missing
after a 57-year-old woman in La Grita, Táchira convinced them to join her on a spiritual retreat.
She apparently told her followers that the Virgin Mary told her the world was about to end
Some of the individuals dropped out of the group when García started behaving erratically, La Nacion reported.
García instructed the group that they could no longer worship the Holy Christ of La Grita, that they were not to look the Virgin Mary in the eyes and that they were to discard their cellular phones.
Authorities said Wednesday that nine of the individuals missing are from the same family and that the group is traveling in two vehicles.
La Grita Mayor Juan Carlos Escalante said that 160 members from a search and rescue team and law enforcement agencies were looking for the group. Drones and sniffer dogs were also deployed as part of a wider search.
The mountainous town of La Grita sits 4,725 feet above sea level.
On Monday, authorities discovered an abandoned farm where some of the people who are still unaccounted for discarded several clothing items and left food behind.
Locals said García dropped out of a neighborhood prayer group and formed her own, called 'Following Jesus.' The group would frequently get together to hold prayer sessions for people battling illnesses.
Others recalled that García's group 'switched from religious practices to fanaticism' and noticed that group members 'spent their time beating their chests' while promoting their religious ideas.
Some said that García's family thought she was mentally unstable.
'She sent people to confession, to go to mass and to pray,' a resident told La Nacion. 'She said that many bad things were coming, that Christ cried tears of blood for what we all do. That the world was going to end.'
Since March, none of the group members were allowed to watch television and had to start praying at 3am every day, digital news outlet Impacto Venezuela reported. Women were also urged not to do their hair and could not show their faces when they left their homes.
During a mass held Sunday at the La Grita Minor Basilica of the Holy Spirit, Father Jesús Mora warned the congregation to be aware of people like García who could do more harm than good.
'You have to be afraid of fanatics, because a fanatic can do a lot of damage,' Mora said. 'God doesn't want us to be fanatics.'
García is not married and administered her own station at a food stand owned by her sister Teresa García - one of her 13 siblings.
She allegedly was able to influence Teresa to join the retreat along with her husband, two children, son-in-law and grandson.
Horrifying moment banker catches tiger shark with human remains
inside the beast’s stomach after foot pops out
Katie Davis
10:55, 8 Sep 2022
A BANKER was horrified after realising the tiger shark he had caught had human remains inside its belly after the beast coughed up a foot.
Humphrey Simmons was fishing in waters off the Bahamas with pals when he snared the "unusually heavy" 12-foot predator.
Authorities found the remains of a man inside the shark - except his head
But as Simmons went to cut the hook from the shark's jaws, a human foot suddenly popped out, The Tribune reported.
He said: "We were going to cut the hook out of his mouth and let him go when he regurgitated a human foot. Everything was intact from the knee down. It was mangled, but there was still flesh on the bone."
The stunned fishermen - fearing there may be more bodies inside - took the shark to shore in Nassau and it was cut open. Inside, disgusted authorities found the severed remains of a man - minus his head.
The shark had regurgitated the man's left leg, and his right leg, two arms and two - split in two - were found in its stomach.
Forensic examiners completed DNA tests on the mutilated body parts, confirming the remains appeared to be at least a couple of days old.
They could not say for sure whether the man was dead or alive when eaten by the beast.
Considering that his head was not present, my guess is that he was not alive at the time. That was one greedy shark - so full from the man it swallowed and yet it took the bait from the banker-fisherman.
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