The friend who found missing British tourist Hannah Almond after she disappeared in Peru has told how ran into his arms crying after he found her on Sunday.
Ms Almond, 32 from Grimsby, went missing on Saturday after being violently robbed by locals and left sleeping under a bridge with no money or passport for a month.
She was found on Sunday by Piero Villanueva, who she had met briefly in Lima and who travelled to Cusco to look for her after MailOnline raised awareness of her plight.
‘I have just found her. She is safe and well. I’d like to thank the authorities and the people who contacted me so I could help her,’ he told Cusco TV 47 immediately after.
‘Hannah recognised me and approached me crying and I asked her to leave with me. Thanks God she’s safe.’
He told the outlet that he was ‘talking with her mum but she’s an elderly lady and we don’t want to worry her anymore.’
He said they would now ‘see what [Hannah’s mother] wants to do’ next.
Villanueva had been in contact with the consul and Hannah’s friends, working together to follow her movements after she disappeared on May 24.
He had searched for Ms Almond into the night on Saturday around the area she was last seen, the San Pedro market.
Searching from 7pm until 3am on Saturday, they continued their search of the city on Sunday and found Ms Almond asleep and slumped on the pavement.
‘Hannah recognised me and approached me crying and I asked her to leave with me. Thank God she’s safe,’ Villanueva told local TV. The two are pictured together after the rescue
Piero Villanueva (left) travelled to Cusco to help Hannah (right) after he learned of her ordeal
British tourist, Hannah Almond, 32, feared trafficked after vanishing in Peru has been found
Villanueva had been in contact with the consul and Hannah’s (pictured) friends, working together to follow her movements after she disappeared on May 24
‘It is a huge relief that she has been found,’ one friend told MailOnline.
‘When she stopped contacting people we were worried she had been trafficked and we would never hear from her again.
‘After the MailOnline story, a guy she met in Lima who she only knew for about four days caught a flight to Cusco straight away and just started wandering the streets asking after her.
‘He found her just asleep on the street, and one of her friends has flown out from the UK to Cusco to try and persuade her to come home. We want her home in the next few days.’
Piero added: ‘I met Hannah in Lima, where I come from. I decided to travel to Cusco at the request of her friends and family after seeing her situation online — she was sleeping under a bridge.’
The fashion graduate from Grimsby had been on a yoga retreat to ‘find herself’ since March when she was attacked by locals and left sleeping rough.
Concerns grew for her last week when angry locals attacked her and set fire to her belongings.
Friends, writing on her GoFundMe page, said she had left for Peru ‘hoping for adventure’ but instead ‘found herself in a terrifying and heartbreaking situation’.
Piero told the outlet that he was ‘talking with her mum’ to plan next steps for Hannah
Trauma from the attack has left her too scared to accept help from embassy officials
Hannah is pictured in Cusco after losing all her belongings
All of her belongings were burnt (above) after she was robbed in Peru
They said she was robbed and assaulted, losing her passport, phone and all of her money.
Struggling to deal with the brazen attack, they said her mental health had ‘severely declined’ and ‘in the midst of a mental health crisis’ she had begun ‘living under a bridge with a homeless man she befriended’ in Cusco.
Even after she was found, friends said she refused to accept assistance, with psychosis triggered by the trauma of being violently robbed leaving her too frightened to engage with officials or locals.
‘We know she has been refusing help due to the complexity of her mental health so it is most likely that she will need to placed into psychiatric care before getting a flight back,’ they said in an update, with the page still collecting donations.
‘This is an ongoing process but we are doing all we can to bring her back safely!’
Mark Atkinson, the British Consul in Peru, told local media Hannah arrived in Cusco in early March as a tourist and did not plan to overstay her visa however her immigration status is now in limbo.
‘She is in an illegal situation. Her tourist visa has already expired,’ Atkinson explained.
Hannah was left stranded, penniless and unable to reliably contact her family after the attack
Hannah had been in Peru since March on a yoga retreat
Adding that the embassy is coordinating with local police and has also offered direct support including hotel accommodations and money for food but she keeps returning to the same bridge.
‘Sometimes we’ve paid for hotel stays, given her money for food, that sort of thing. But she always ends up coming back here,’ he added.
More than 100,000 Brits travel to Peru every year with most stopping in Cusco which is the gateway to Machu Picchu and the Inca Trail.
FCO travel advice warns a number of Brit tourists have been targeted by armed robbers in recent years. It adds: ‘Personal attacks, including sexual assaults, are infrequent but do happen, mostly in the Cusco and Arequipa areas.’
