Missing Air Force Major Found Alive

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 shaved.

Maho said she had also been beaten. "I know she's coherent, and whoever had her let her go," said Mayo. "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.

Mayo said the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations notified the family Friday afternoon but were given 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.

There was no immediately U.S. comment on the kidnapping report. Carpenter declined to discuss Metzger's condition, which a U.S. military statement said will be determined by a medical team.

"We are elated to have Jill back with us," a U.S. military statement quoted the base commander, Col. Scott Reese, as saying.

Kyrgyz authorities notified base officials at 1:15 a.m. local time Saturday of the news, the statement 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.

Jill's husband, Capt. Joshua Mayo, and his father, Kelly Mayo, spoke with CBS News Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen on Friday.

Joshua Mayo said he last spoke with his wife on Monday morning.

"We discussed a few family matters and then we discussed her trip going off the base and about her coming home and all of the things that we were looking forward to doing," Mayo said.

"I just told her to be safe," he said.

Her disappearance had baffled investigators. The military had 22 special agents looking for Metzger.

The shopping center where Metzger disappeared, located about 35 miles from the base, is not a particularly dangerous area, said Col. Kevin Jacobson of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.

Still, the military had instituted a new policy barring all off-duty personnel from leaving the base until Metzger was found. It was unclear late Friday whether that policy had changed.

Interior Ministry spokesman Nurdin Jangarayev told the AP 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. Over the next three hours, two calls were placed to her cellular phone but neither was answered, he said.

Before her disappearance, Metzger had been scheduled to head to Dayton, Ohio, for the annual United States Air Force Marathon. She has twice won the women's division of the event.

A week later, she was to travel with her husband to Jamaica for a belated 10-day honeymoon.

"Jill is a consummate happy-go-lucky person," her father-in-law said. "She doesn't see any kind of evil in the world. She's a wonderful, innocent person, and she would never think anyone would try and harm her."

[grazinggoat]

RonnieHM, you are better put some substance in your comments instead of just filling up with fertilizer, and by personally attacking others.

[ronniehm]

I dunno. Maybe she initially told her parents a toned-down version of events. I can understand that.

[wdavid261]

Good points all, RonnieHM. I'm just wondering why what has been said officially has conflicted so much with what her family has said she told them. I doubt Maj. Metzger had anything to do with what happened other than being a victim. Like I said, I want to believe what she says and don't want to play "blame the victim." I just wish folks would get their facts straight before putting them out into the world.

[ronniehm]

Two things, goat. #1 Jill was in the Air Force, not the Army. #2 You're a foreigner. Stop pretending to be an American.

[joanna38]

Nothing strange about this at all. The way she was dressed, highlighted her as a foreigner. Having dye on her hands mean nothing, except, they wanted her hair dyed and told her to do so.
The people who abducted her, could have had their plan in place and waited for the first person to fit their plan.
Last, but not least, why should she not have gone to that shopping mall? She was ready to return home and specifically wanted to buy gifts for the family back home in the USA.

[grazinggoat]

Dear teacherbelle, I appreciate your comment, nonetheless you have to understand that Jill is not a Tourist on a leisure trip. She is in the Army. What you pretend she is safeguarding our freedom is not so clear cut as you claim it to be. Most often if we have freedom and be sure, we enjoy it, it's because someone else, elsewhere in the world has lost his. What we (as a nation) with such administration, we are putting puppets atop of some nations at the cost of their population freedom with all the exactions they inflict on them.

Freedom should be appreciated as long as there is no other human being, out there, suffering for ours.

No intention to be mean. Rather HAPPY Jill is Back. Wishes for her being back to her family, were sincere.

[wdavid261]

I have seen comments in the blogoshere from people claiming to know Major Metzger that speak very highly of her, and her family seems rock solid. I want to believe what she says, but why are there so many differing accounts of what happened, and who, if anyone, is getting the facts straight? Local officials say she left a department store alone only three minutes after entering with a companion and that while in the store, a suspected bomb was put in her pocket with instructions telling her where to go. How could the abductors have planned this and prepared the fake bomb and message then planted it in a three to five minute span? And then the local officials say that Major Metzger's hair was dyed and her own hands were stained with the dye. This all does sound a little odd, and differs with the account of her family members that she was found beaten and with a shaved. Now don't get me wrong. Let's not play the "blame the victim" game that many others tried to play with Jill Carroll when they accused her of faking her own abduction. But so far the facts just don't match or add up. Regardless of what happened,

[twinella47]

I am very happy for Jill to be alive and for her family too. It is easy for us to make comments, but you have to put your self in her situation. Jill was entitled to go shopping and touring.
Jill I hope you and your family will overcome this
horrible experience and be able to go to Jamaica or where ever you desire for your Honeymoon.
Love and Blessings and all the best wishes.

[teacherbelle]

Please understand that your callous remark is an instant blow to those of us who know Jill and her family. As someone who has been praying for her safe return, jokes about tourist season don't seem appropriate. Be happy that women like Jill risk their lives every day so that you may enjoy your freedoms. Thank you for following it up with well wishes of her safe return.

[mdd37]

She wasn't a tourist. She was stationed at Manas Air Base.