A Carrefour supermarket employee who went missing for two days has been found alive in a broken-down lift without any food or water.
The incident took place in the municipality of Santos in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo on the country’s south-eastern coast after the worker went missing on Saturday 25th September.
He was finally found on Monday morning (27th September) and despite having a shift to cover on Sunday, no one noticed that he was trapped inside the lift, according to the media outlet G1.
The man survived despite not having any food or water with him and his mother raised the alarm after he failed to return home on Saturday evening.
The worker, who has not been named, reportedly worked for the Carrefour supermarket on Conselheiro Nebias Avenue in the city of Santos for seven years.
His worried mother shared this photo of him on social media in a plea for information about his whereabouts.
The mother, who has not been named, said that her son uses prescription medicine and that he had never failed to return home without letting people know where he was before.
All in all, he spent about 36 hours stuck in the confined space before he was finally found on Monday morning when his colleagues started their first shift of the week.
The mother did not file a police report because she was instructed to wait at least 24 hours from the moment he first disappeared because he is an adult.
The supermarket has launched an internal investigation to determine what happened and a maintenance team established that the lift had stopped working.
Carrefour released a statement saying that the employee was in good health and was at home with his family after being taken to hospital for a checkup.
The supermarket also said that it was providing a social worker to give psychological support to its employees and to the victim’s close family members.
In its statement, the supermarket said: “We are with the family members to provide all necessary support, including psychological support. We are dismayed by what happened and we are investigating the incident internally.”
