Police in Brazil have rescued a man whose neighbours believe may have been held captive by his family for anywhere up to 20 years.
The man, identified as Armando Bezerra de Andrade, 36, was recovered by officers during an unrelated anti-drugs raid in the city of Guarulhos, north east of Sao Paulo.
Neighbours said he was an outgoing student who was regularly beaten by his stepmother before he suddenly disappeared when he was 16, Reuters reported. The man was taken to a local hospital in the south-eastern city and police said he was unable to talk.
Pictures of the room where the man was found showed only a bed and a dirty toilet. Reports said the walls had chains.
There was no-one else in the house when the police stormed it. Neighbours said the man's father, stepmother and her son used to live there.
Mr Andrade’s father later went to a police station and told officers that the victim had fled the house when he was a teenager. He returned last week, the father claimed, asking to be kept by the family in the room because he was a drug user.
Tests will now determine if there was any recent use of drugs or medicine, CNN said.
The police say they were investigating whether he had been locked up for 15 years, while neighbors claim he had been imprisoned in the family home for as long as 20 years.
According to the police chief in charge of the investigation, Celso Marchiori, the father told him: “This is my son, that house is mine, and I was the one who locked him in there, as he had asked me to.
“He is a drug user and he showed up at home after being gone for many years, he showed up at home and asked me to lock him up so he wouldn't buy drugs.”
The man’s father reportedly added: “My conscience is clear.”
Mr Marchiori said of the victim: “He was very debilitated. He got up with a lot of difficulty and walked to the door with difficulty. He didn’t speak. And so we didn't know if he did not speak because he had been doped up.”
Mr Marchiori said the smell in the room was horrible since the victim had been urinating and defecating there.
Before the younger Bezerra de Andrade went missing as a teen, neighbours said he was a bright young man, and denied that he was a drug user. Friend Rafael Cunha Sousa said the man’s father always skirted questions about his son.
“When people would ask him how he was, he would always say he was traveling, or in the countryside, or at a relative’s house, but he would never provide us with an address or say where he was,” Mr Sousa said.
