“I knew that there were a lot of sharks in that area and, I don’t know if in a hallucination, I felt the fin of a passing shark very close to me”. The account is by Angélica Gaitan, the 46-year-old woman who was found floating this Saturday in Puerto Colombia, on the Colombian coast, by two fishermen.
The mother of two daughters had been missing for two years after running away from her husband, who, according to her, beat her frequently. It was to escape death that the woman ran away in September 2018 and after two years of hard times, when she came to live as a homeless person, she went into a deep depression. Last Friday he decided to put an end to his life and threw himself into the sea, but life changed his life and survived.
Angelica had been at sea for eight hours when she was found two kilometers off the Colombian coast by Rolando Visbal and a friend. He was in hypothermia and on the verge of death. “I was born again, God didn’t want me to die,” she said when the fishermen found her.
She was brought ashore after being rescued by Rolando, where she was rescued by the locals until she was taken to the hospital.
From domestic violence victim to survivor
Angelica revealed to the radioRCN who was a victim of domestic violence 20 years ago and tried to escape so that her husband would not kill her.
“For 20 years, I had a toxic relationship, I was raped by my ex-husband. The abuse started in the first pregnancy, he beat me and attacked violently, in my second pregnancy, the abuse continued and I couldn’t escape it because the girls were small “, reports.
“Many times I reported it, but the police took him and 24 hours later he was at the house again,” he said.
In September 2018, when the family no longer knew his whereabouts, Angélica fled after being violently attacked. The woman claims that she lived in a difficult situation for six months in Barranquilla and was subsequently taken to a shelter for the most needy. It was then that, he claims, he went into a deep depression.
“I didn’t want to go on with my life. A lady gave me tickets and took a bus directly to the sea,” she said, assuming that her husband kept her away from any help from family or friends that she could turn to.
The woman assumes that she remembers being on the beach and entering the water. “I let myself go and waited for this nightmare to end.” From there, Angelica says she doesn’t remember much.
The daughters of this woman, meanwhile identified, guarantee that Angélica does not tell the truth regarding the abuses that she suffered. They now hope to be able to see their mother again when she is transported to the Colombian capital, Bogotá.
The account of the fishermen who saved her
Rolando and Gustavo would have gone fishing on Friday, instead of Saturday, had it not been for the engine problems of the boat they owned. “If we didn’t have the spark plug problem on Friday, we would have gone fishing that day and the woman would be dead at sea,” admitted Rolando to Radio Caracol, from Colombia.
“Gustavo warned me to be careful with a trunk and I started to turn about 15 degrees to the right, so, to my surprise, the trunk moved. I thought it was something supernatural”, he reports. The trunk was, after all, Angélica Gaitan, asking for help from the two fishermen.
THE video recorded by the duo shows Angelica being dragged to the boat in a life buoy. As soon as the woman is rescued, she begins to cry and after several attempts at communication, Angélica finally manages to reply: “I was born again”.
– .
