A 23-year-old man, Eduardo Mauricio da Silva, who disappeared in Bertioga, a municipality in São Paulo, Brazil, on New Year’s Eve, was found disoriented in a wooded area five days later. Reports from Brazilian media suggest that Eduardo asked a colleague to drop him off on the side of a highway in the Sítio São João neighborhood just before midnight, claiming he was heading to a friend’s house.
His last contact with his family was a text message to his father at around 2 am on January 1, requesting him to book a car through an app. However, the father missed the message as he was asleep and only realized his son was missing later that morning.
Eduardo’s father reported him missing at 5 pm on January 1. During the search, the family received surveillance camera footage showing Eduardo in a wooded area in the Caiubura neighborhood. He was eventually found after a man contacted the family, claiming to have seen Eduardo.
According to Eduardo’s aunt, Dalva Rosa da Silva, the family and friends tirelessly searched for him and found him on January 5 in a remote forest area where he was weak, malnourished, and disoriented. The circumstances surrounding his disappearance remain unclear, but his emotional state seems shaken.
The Fire Department was alerted but later discovered that Eduardo had already been found by his family. He is currently hospitalized in Baixada Santista. Interestingly, on the same day Eduardo went missing, another man named Roberto Farias Tomaz disappeared on Pico Paraná, the highest point in southern Brazil. Roberto was found after five days, having walked 20km through challenging terrain and woodland to reach the Cacatu area of Antonina, where he was rescued and taken to the hospital.