Heartbreaking message from dying mom to kids after jungle plane crash

The mother of the four children miraculously rescued from a Colombian jungle survived for four days before dying after their light plane crashed, her heartbroken husband revealed Sunday.

Manual Ranoque said his eldest surviving daughter Lesly, 13, told him his wife Magdalena Mucutuy Valencia battled to stay alive but in the end told them to save themselves.

Ranoque, speaking in the Colombian capital Bogota of the children’s astonishing 40-day ordeal before they were rescued by the military said: ‘Let’s be clear, the girl (Lesly) knows everything.

‘The only thing that she clarified is that the mother was alive for four days. Before she died… she told them “Go!” And you will find out what your dad is made of… and what your father’s love is like.’

The new heartbreaking revelation comes as the four children – Lesly Jacombaire Mucutuy, Soleiny Jacombaire Mucutuy, nine, Tien Noriel Ronoque Mucutuy, four, and one-year-old Cristin Neriman Ranoque Mucutuy – remain in a military hospital in Bogota after their astonishing ordeal.

The father of two victims, and stepfather to the others, expressed frustration with hospital authorities on Sunday as they prevented him from seeing two while they recovered.  

The drama began to unfold on May 1 when the group caught a routine flight on a Cessna 206 from Araracuara to the town of San Jose del Guaviare. In a country with such dense jungle, light aircraft and boats are often the only viable means of transport. 

Minutes after starting the 350km (220 mile) journey, the pilot reported problems with the engine and the plane disappeared from radars. 

When the wreckage of the plane was found after weeks of hunting not only were the children not found dead alongside the adults, there was part-eaten fruit that suggested they had all survived.

That sparked a huge hunt across miles of dense and remote Amazon rainforest and the President, Gustavo Petro, mistakenly caused false hope when he said they were safe only to retract his statement and say there was just evidence they might still be alive.

After they were miraculously found, dramatic footage shows how the four children were winched into a rescue helicopter, bitten, dehydrated and malnourished but mercifully alive, and taken to safety for medical treatment.

But the rescue efforts intensified and he delivered the news the country, and the watching world, had hoped for.

‘It is a joy for the whole country,’ Petro Tweeted.

‘They were alone, they themselves achieved an example of total survival which will remain in history.’

The siblings, members of the Huitoto Indigenous group, were dehydrated, malnourished and bitten by insects but are otherwise healthy, rescuers said. 

It is understood Manuel Ranoque is the father of the two youngest children and stepfather of the two older ones.

He came out from the hospital again in the afternoon and was highly emotional when he told DailyMail.com: ‘I was so excited the moment I saw my children.’

He went on to say to reporters: ‘You have got to understand I can’t speak about the situation inside the hospital because it’s very sensitive.. but I can say they are doing way better.’

And he put their survival down to their upbringing, saying: ‘ ‘The kids are possessed by nature.’

But he revealed his anger at authorities who he says are not allowing him to see the two older children.

‘This is not a game,’ he said. ‘They are fine. I cannot talk to the (two older) children, I cannot tell you anything about them until the father, the creator (apparently referring to God) allows me to…

‘You will never understand our world. We are indigenous people. We cannot lose time getting an education, we have shown our skills, what we are capable of, we found the airplane, we found the kids, what else do you want?

‘Now may God continue to protect them.’

In an emotional state, he continued: ‘I have only been able to see my two little kids, because the Government will not allow me to see my other two daughters. I don’t know why I can’t see them.

‘They (the authorities) haven’t completely understood that I am coming from 40 days in the jungle, they think I’m coming from a bar or from the streets.’

He went on: ‘I want to thank the military hospital, the kids are in good hands and I think after a month I will have my kids with me, that is my dream.

‘They (the authorities) don’t understand I am their father. The government has taken this as a joke to step over me.

‘I am the father I went to look for them, I searched for them and now that I brought them back, now I cannot see them how is that possible? And the other search teams, the other people, can see them.

‘They are allowed to see them, to take pictures with them. And us, my colleagues that have come from suffering, they haven’t been given any medical attention. I fought 40 days on my knees in the jungle.

‘I have only seen the two older children in photos. And that worries me.

‘I call upon the nation to please respect that I am the dad. They (the older children) have got to talk to me first. How come they are talking to people who when I was in the jungle didn’t even send a glass of water while I was dying of hunger and thirst in the jungle?

‘I never had any support and now the kids are here there are people trying to make money out of this.’

DailyMail.com asked about the future of his children and he replied: ‘The children have to have a decent place to live, access to education and many big things are coming for my children.’

The father’s anger comes amid sources indicating to DailyMail.com the Colombian authorities want to have influence over the future upbringing of at least the two older children. 

Ranoque, who fled his area after being threatened by FARC guerrillas, said the two older children were being brainwashed by the group into believing that he was abusing them.

But he said Sunday: ‘I am not their biological father, but they were trying to tell them I was abusing them. Lesly shut their mouths, saying I am their father.’

Their grandmother, whose voice was played from aircraft above the jungle during the search to reassure the youngsters they were being looked for, told reporters: ‘I never lost hope, I was always supporting the search. I feel very happy, I thank President Petro and my ‘countrymen’ who went through so many difficulties.’

After the siblings were found alive army radios could be heard saying: ‘Miracle, miracle, miracle, miracle’ – the army code for a child found alive and repeated four times to reflect all four children.

Colombia’s Defense Minister Ivan Velasquez, said: ‘It is thanks to [Lesly], her value and her leadership, that the three others were able to survive, with her care, her knowledge of the jungle.

‘In general the children, the boy and the girls are in an acceptable state, according to the medical reports they are out of danger.’

Military doctor Carlos Rincon said while the children have ‘nutritional deficiencies’ they only survived with only ‘some soft tissue injuries, bites, and skin lesions’.

He added: ‘We will begin the process of incorporating food when we complete the process of clinical examinations that will be done today.

‘If things go well, we believe they will stay in the hospital for two to three weeks.’

Officials are crediting Lesly for her efforts to help save her siblings, and family members said a survival game the played helped prepare them for the ordeal. 

Lesly, the eldest, ‘knew what fruits she can’t eat because there are many poisonous fruits in the forest. And she knew how to take care of a baby,’ aunt Damarys Mucutuy told the Caracol news network.

‘She gave them flour and cassava bread, any fruit in the bush, they know what they must consume,’ Ms Valencia said.

‘They were raised by their grandmother,’ said John Moreno, a leader of the Guanano group in Vaupes, in the southeastern part of Colombia where the children were raised.

‘They used what they learned in the community, relied on their ancestral knowledge in order to survive.’

Between May 15 and 16, soldiers found the bodies of the three adults and the debris of the plane, which was wedged vertically in the thick vegetation, its nose destroyed.

But the children remained missing.

Some 200 soldiers and indigenous people with knowledge of the terrain have been combing a dense jungle area of some 320 sq km (124 sq mi) – about double the size of Washington, DC.

The air force had dumped 10,000 flyers into the forest with instructions in Spanish and the children’s indigenous Huitoto language, telling them to stay put.

The leaflets also included survival tips, and the military has dropped food parcels and bottled water for the children.

Powerful searchlights were shone into the area ‘so that the minors can approach us’, search team member Colonel Fausto Avellaneda told the Noticias Caracol TV show.

Huitoto children learn hunting, fishing and gathering, and the kids’ grandfather, Fidencio Valencia, had said the children are well acquainted with the jungle.

At one point the search team believed it had come to within 100m (300ft) of them, but storms, thick vegetation and marshy terrain prevented them from reaching them.

Members of the indigenous community held traditional ceremonies ‘speaking to the jungle’ and asking it to give up the children.

But the jungle began giving up tantalizing clues that hopes were not lost for the youngsters. In photographs released by the military, scissors, shoes, and hair ties could be seen among branches on the jungle floor.

A baby’s drinking bottle and half-eaten pieces of fruit had been spotted before the shelter’s discovery.

Then nearly two weeks ago, a footprint was found on the muddy jungle floor. Army officials believed it to belong to 13-year-old Lesly.

Leaders from the Huitoto indigenous group expressed hope that the children’s knowledge of fruits and jungle survival skills should give them better odds of being found alive.

Boxes of food were dropped to the jungle floor to help sustain the children. And yesterday the efforts paid off when one of the rescue dogs who had been on their scent led soldiers to the group, the President confirmed. They had been following footprints left on the muddy floor.

‘The jungle saved them,’ Petro said. ‘They are children of the jungle, and now they are also children of Colombia.’