According to Colombian officials, the father of two of the four Indigenous kids who survived a plane crash in which their mother and two other people perished and then made it through 40 days on their own in the Amazon jungle has been detained.
The father of the one- and four-year-old boys in the crash and the stepfather of the two girls, who are nine and thirteen, Manuel Ranoque was detained, according to the Colombian prosecutor’s office.
Although the statement made no mention of the cause, media reports indicated that claims of domestic abuse were there.
The Colombian Institute for Family Welfare’s director, Astrid Eliana Caceres, said that the government organization had been collaborating with the law enforcement.
“We learned of the capture of the father of two Mucutuy minor children and we believe that the prosecutor’s office has operated within the full framework of the law,” she said.
Ranoque and the children’s maternal grandparents are engaged in a custody dispute. Lesly, the oldest kid, claims that their mother passed away four days following the collision.
Since being discharged from the hospital following their recovery from malnutrition and other illnesses, the four siblings have remained in the care of Colombia’s child protection agency.
Narciso Mucutuy, their maternal grandfather, has charged Ranoque with assaulting Magdalena Mucutuy, their mother.
Ranoque admitted to reporters that there had been issues at home before authorities announced his arrest, but he insisted that he did not view them as “gossip” for the public because they were personal family matters.
When questioned if he had physically hurt his wife, Ranoque responded, “Verbaly all of a sudden, yeah. Really not much, physically.