Canberra teenager missing for a week found alive

Kathleen Bautista has been found seven days after crashing her vehicle down an embankment in the ACT.

One of the searchers told the ABC Ms Bautista crashed her vehicle on Saturday on an unmarked road near the Cotter reserve, where it fell down an embankment into a creek.

For six days, she has survived on water from the creek.

Kathleen Bautista, 19, was the subject of a hunt by family, friends and emergency workers for several days after she was last seen leaving a friend’s house in the Canberra suburb of Chapman on Saturday.

Ms Bautista managed to escape the upturned vehicle and stumbled up the other side of the steep embankment. She has been taken to Canberra Hospital injured and dehydrated.

The search party concentrated on the Lower Molonglo Nature Reserve before moving further west to the Cotter catchment area.

At the time, officers said they held grave concerns for her welfare, following text messages sent to her boyfriend Sajana Abeygunawardena and family on the morning she went missing.

The Canberra community quickly rallied to help her, with around 100 volunteers distributing 30,000 flyers seeking information on her whereabouts.

Father Ronnie Bautista said his daughter, a former student of St Clare’s College, was a “loving and generous person with a very big heart”. “Please come home and don’t be scared”.

It’s believed she’d not eaten for seven days.