Grandma found alive in forest

A 78-year-old Frenchwoman suffering from Alzheimer's disease who was missing for nearly a week after falling on a walk in an Alpine forest was found alive over the weekend and hospitalized.

"That's enough! No more forests; I don't want to see them anymore. I want to go to a retirement home," Michele Riotton told journalists from her hospital bed in the French Alpine town of Thonon-les-Bains.

Riotton said she remembers "slipping into a ravine and then falling asleep" while on a walk through a forest after leaving her home in the village of Armoy on August 29.

Dressed in a light jacket, she spent six nights out in the open and had nothing to eat the whole time except two biscuits that had been stuffed in a pocket and only drank rainwater that ran down her face.

"I wasn't afraid," Riotton said. "I thought mostly about the worry I was causing my children and grandchildren."

A two-day search had been mounted for Riotton without success.

A second search was conducted Saturday, which found her lying at the bottom of a steep ravine in a pile of leaves 700 meters from her home.

AFP