The owners of a company that rented out a kayak to a California yogi who disappeared during a retreat in Guatemala claimed the group she was with acted strangely — refusing to talk to them after they came back from the lake excursion without the woman and then skipping town.
Lee and Elaine Beal, owners of Kayak Guatemala, told ABC News said the missing yogi, Nancy Ng, 29, had arrived in a group of 10 people to go out on kayaks on Lake Atitlán.
“When the group returned, there were only eight that returned, but we could see in the distance, a distance of about 100 yards, two single kayaks,” Lee said, adding that the two kayakers were Ng and another woman.
“We watched them as they continued paddling until we lost sight of them,” he said.
After a distress signal was called in, Lee said he saw the woman who had been with Ng being led ashore.
“I witnessed the survivor being ushered up the steps with the yoga instructor. She was clearly distressed, and they didn’t say a word to us,” Elaine told the outlet.
Lee said no one seemed willing to talk about what may have happened.
“It was almost like, immediately clamming up and like, ‘We’re not going to say anything,’” he said.
The couple said they called the kayakers’ hotel the following day because they hadn’t been paid, but were informed that the group had already split.
“I just don’t understand that part of leaving within eight hours, 12 hours of the accident,” Elaine said, according to ABC News.
The Guatemala Attorney General’s Office has been unable to interview the woman who was with Nancy or the tour guide because the group has left the country, the outlet reported.
Prosecutors reportedly believe Ng went swimming and drowned.
Elaine told Inside Edition that they also assume Ng wanted to take a swim.
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“If you stand up or even get out of your kayak, it automatically pushes away from you,” she told the outlet.
“It just seems more odd that as time passes and this person, the survivor, may have certainly seen the news and knows what is going on and has not, even now, disclosed any information,” Elaine added.
Ng’s family told ABC News in a statement that they have “tried to contact the witness many times over the last three weeks but she will not speak with us.
“The police report we received did not include a direct statement from her either. Her silence has hindered our search efforts and left us in the dark about what happened to Nancy. We don’t know which nightmare scenario to believe,” they added.
Ng’s family has questioned the simple explanation of it being a drowning — claiming it took more than 24 hours for her disappearance to be reported.
The missing woman’s sibling Nicky said the family wants answers.
“Your first thought is, is it a potential drowning? But then the question comes, if it is a drowning and nothing nefarious was done, why aren’t witnesses coming forward,” Nicky told Inside Edition. “We do know there are people that saw what happened. They haven’t come forward.”
The FBI has offered resources to help in a search, while the US State Department has been monitoring the investigation while in touch with Guatemalan officials, ABC News reported.
“Given the lack of a firsthand account of where and how exactly Nancy disappeared, we are trying to cover search efforts based on every possible scenario,” an update states in a GoFundMe account created for the family.
“On the investigative side, Guatemalan authorities are working on getting an official statement from the woman who was with Nancy when she disappeared,” it says.
“Though no one saw Nancy get out of her kayak, witnesses and some retreat participants have given us a best-to-their-knowledge estimate of where they saw Nancy’s empty kayak. These accounts are naturally subjective and imperfect. But at the moment, it’s all we have,” the post continues.
“We plan to pass this data along to an underwater search and recovery team for them to conduct a deep water search of the lake,” it says, adding that the family has contacted a couple of organziations that have offered to assist.
Ng, a fitness enthusiast and former Cal State law student, worked with special-need kids in the Alhambra Unified School District.
