U.S. Air Force major found in Kyrgyzstan

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, Kyrgyz and U.S. 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 told The Associated Press, citing 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 with the AP from Colorado Springs, Colo., that Metzger was found on the side of the road with her head shaven.

"I know she's coherent, and whoever had her let her go," said Mayo, who added the family had been notified by the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations. "We've got her back. Praise the Lord."

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