WINNIPEG – A Winnipeg mother’s prayers were answered after her 17-year old daughter Bethlehem Zeleke Eliso was lost for 24 hours and forced to take shelter from the frigid cold in a vacant home.
“I enter one home and stay there all the night,” Eliso said on Wednesday, sitting in a warm sweater with her family surrounding her.
Police and volunteers searched for Eliso Tuesday after she got lost walking home from Elmwood High School on Monday morning. It was her first day at a new school after emigrating to Canada from Ethiopia just last month.
“I’m scared because of the cold winter,” said Eliso. Her mother feared the worst.
“I think in my mind she’s died,” said Zenbach Deselagn, “she’s never to come back to this home.”
After walking for hours in the cold, Eliso took refuge for the night in a home under construction. A man walked into the home in the morning and asked what she was doing there and asked her to leave, so she continued walking and stopped at Barcol Controls, a heating and cooling business on Kimberley Avenue.
“I saw her coming in from my window and we don’t get a lot of visitors,” said employee Eva Dechevigny. “She was standing right here and she looked down and she wasn’t looking at me, she was shy, so when I see the ice on her lashes I was just like ‘You must be cold, you poor thing.’ So I took her inside and I start asking her ‘Are you OK?’ She didn’t say much, she just said call the police.”
Within an hour, police reunited Eliso with her family, who are holding each other a little tighter today.
Comments