This article was first published 9 years ago

2 days after Kenya massacre, teen found hiding in cupboard

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April 04, 2015 17:48 IST

Cynthia Charotich was found 50 hours after gunmen stormed the Garissa University college and killed 148. She said she survived by drinking body lotion, when hungry.

A relative is assisted by Red Cross staff as bodies of the students killed in Thursday's attack by gunmen, arrive at the Chiromo Mortuary in Nairobi. Photograph: Herman Kariuki/Reuters
 

Two days after gunmen belonging to the Islamist extremist Al Shabab group stormed the Garissa University college on Thursday and shot dead 148 people, a 19-year-old survivor has been found.

Cynthia Charotich said that she hid in a large cupboard and covered herself with clothes, refusing to emerge even when some of her classmates came out of hiding at the demands of the gunmen from the Al Shabab group.

Speaking of her horrible ordeal, Charotich said that when rescuers first urged her to come out of hiding, she didn’t believe them and suspected them to be the gunmen.

“How do I know that you are the Kenyan police?” she said she asked them.

“I was just praying to my God,” Charotich, said of her ordeal.

Only when Kenyan security forces had one of her teachers appeal to her did she come out, she said.

Charotich was rescued on Saturday morning, some 50 hours after the attack began. The BBC said she told them she drank “body lotion when she felt hungry”.

Four other people were found alive on the campus on Friday, including two suspects. One was said to be a Tanzanian national with no known links to the university.

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