American woman disappears while attending yoga retreat in Guatemala
'With every passing day, our family nightmare gets worse. Our fears of never finding her more real.'
A family is searching for answers after a California woman went missing during a yoga retreat in Guatemala.
Nancy Ng, a 29-year-old woman from Monterey Park, California, has been missing for over two weeks after going on a yoga retreat on the shores of Guatemala’s scenic Lake Atitlán.
Ng, who works with special needs children for the Alhambra Unified School District, left for the week-long retreat on October 14.
This was the second year in a row Ng attended the retreat on the northern shore of Lake Atitlán, a 1,120-foot deep lake located in an ancient volcanic crater.
‘She loved it so much she wanted to go back again,’ Nancy’s younger sister Nicky Ng told NBC News.
Ng’s family said they stopped hearing back from her on October 19. They also received a cryptic call from the retreat’s organizer informing them of her disappearance.
The Guatemalan Navy began search-and-rescue efforts the same day, but suspended the search after 72 hours without any leads.
‘We don’t really know exactly what happened,’ Nancy’s brother Jonathan Ng told NBC. ‘The witnesses that were able to see what happened have not been extremely communicative.’
‘With every passing day, our family nightmare gets worse. Our fears of never finding her more real,’ Nicky Ng’s partner Jared Lopez wrote in an update on GoFundMe.
Ng’s family has since hired a private search-and-rescue team, the Black Wolf Helicopters, as well as support from the Bomeros Voluntarios Air Rescue Section and Dive Team.
The rescuers have spent the past few weeks scouring the murky volcanic lake with boats, aircraft, and drones, but have found no sign of the missing woman.
Chris Sharpe, the owner of Black Wolf Helicopters, said that many witnesses have not been forthcoming and have since returned to the United States.
Ng’s family was told she was last seen kayaking in Lake Atitlán, but they were never given an exact location. Sharpe said he cannot even confirm she was ever in the water.
‘For me, this is now becoming a criminal investigation because the witnesses who were there at a material time are not being forthcoming,’ Sharpe told ABC7.
The State Department and the FBI confirmed they were in contact with local authorities in Guatemala and assisting with an investigation into the disappearance.
Got a story? Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk. Or you can submit your videos and pictures here.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
Follow Metro.co.uk on Twitter and Facebook for the latest news updates. You can now also get Metro.co.uk articles sent straight to your device. Sign up for our daily push alerts here.