Wanted man survived winter in high Andes

Uruguayan found starving accused of child sex crimes

A story of human endurance in the snow-covered Andes took a sombre twist Monday with authorities saying the man who survived through the winter after disappearing along Chile’s high-altitude border with Argentina was fleeing child sex abuse allegations.

An emaciated Raul Gomez, a plumber from Uruguay, was rescued Sunday by an Argentine helicopter crew and was recovering in a hospital more than four months after he was last heard from. Repeated search efforts had been called off due to bad weather after failing to turn up any sign of him amid the snowcovered peaks.

It wasn’t clear at first why a 58-year-old motorcyclist with no apparent mountaineering experience was so determined to walk across the Chilean frontier.

Gomez had travelled to Argentina and then Chile to meet up with other motorcyclists.

Gomez told people in the hospital that he decided to cross back over on foot in May after his motorcycle broke down.

However, an official in the Chilean prosecutor’s office in Santiago said Monday that a warrant was issued for Gomez’s arrest April 22 in a probe of child sex abuse allegations.

In Gomez’s hometown of Bella Union, Uruguay, his mother, Irma Cincunegui, said she doesn’t believe the allegations.

“Raul is a good, hard-working man,” she said. “Everybody knows him in Bella Union, where he never had troubles with anybody.”

Gomez was discovered Sunday at the Ingeniero Sardina refuge, a small cabin at 4,500 metres, by a pilot and two state water experts who had flown up to measure snow levels. He told them he took shelter in the refuge after getting disoriented by the Southern Hemisphere’s winter snowstorms.

He had been carrying a small amount of food, and said he ate other meagre supplies that mountaineers had left in the refuge. When that ran out, he told his rescuers that he survived by capturing small animals.

“He lost 20 kilos. He apparently fed himself with mice and an owl or two,” said Hospital Rawson spokesman Rodrigo Belert.

On Monday, Gomez was joined by his two daughters and wife in the intensive care unit of the hospital in San Juan province.

“He’s recuperating well and shows no sign of serious organ damage, but he’s recovering from very severe malnutrition,” Belert said.

Chile’s attorney general’s office must now consider whether to seek his extradition.