Bend teen vanishes in Brazil

BEND -- A Bend high school student on an exchange program has disappeared in Brazil.

MyKensie Martin, 17, was last seen Sunday after attending a church service in a town near where she was staying, a family friend said Tuesday.

....

Martin has been living with a host family and attending classes in Carmo do Parnaiba. Every Sunday, she takes a 45-minute bus ride to the Mormon church in Patos de Minas, southeast of the capital of Brasilia, Emery said.

After last weekend's service, a church member escorted her to the Patos de Minas station for the return trip. "And that was the last time she was seen that we know of," Emery said.

...
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1131525327129580.xml&coll=7


Must go find the other article. Someone claims to
have seen her hitchhiking.

I just posted this in the Oregon forum. Hope you don't mind

...

But there are two slightly different accounts of what led up to MyKensie boarding the bus to Unai.

Steve said the church bishop told him she got on a bus without a ticket. She then went to the ticket office and the church member never saw her again.

The driver of the bus to Carmo do Paranaiba reported waiting for MyKensie but said she never returned, Steve said.

MyKensie's host family told Steve Monday that she purchased a ticket to Unai. The driver of the bus to Unai, who recognizedtion obtained from police investigators by a Rotary International representative in Brazil.

Police told the representative that MyKensie changed her bus ticket at the Patos station to go to Unai instead of Carmo do Paranaiba. A fee collector, who rode the bus with the driver, said he positively identified MyKensie on the Unai trip.

http://www.bendbulletin.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051109/NEWS0107/511090356/1001&nav_category=

Brazilian authorities said Wednesday that a 17-year-old Oregon girl missing since last weekend was seen hitchhiking to the capital of Brasilia from a small city about 80 miles away.


MyKensie Martin, a senior at Summit High School in Bend, Ore., on an exchange visit to Brazil, was spotted by a witness by the side of a highway leading to Brasilia about 6 p.m. Sunday, said Unai police Detective Celso Avila Pardo.


The witness talked with Martin as she was trying to hitchhike, and the girl said she was on her way to attend an event in Brasilia sponsored by the Mormon church and did not have enough money for a bus ticket, Pardo said. The girl is a Mormon. Unai is about 500 miles north of Sao Paulo.

...

...
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2005/11/09/international/i065527S39.DTL