The parents of an Austrian schoolgirl who was missing for eight years say a teenager who apparently escaped from a cellar on Wednesday is their daughter.
Austrian police found stairs leading to a dungeon in the house
Speaking about the moment she was reunited with her daughter, Natascha Kampusch's father, Ludwig Koch, told the Austrian paper Kurier: "She said: 'Dad, I love you.' And the next question was: 'Is my toy car still there?' It was Natascha's favourite toy, I never gave it away in all those years."
He and her half-sister identified the 18-year-old on Wednesday and were joined by her mother, Brigitta Sirny, on Thursday at the hotel Natascha is staying at with a policewoman and a psychologist.
Ms Sirny said she had always been sure her daughter was still alive and could not believe being finally reunited with her.
"She threw her arms around me, I embraced her, and she said 'mum-sweetie, I know you never wanted all this to happen'," Ms Sirny said in an interview with state broadcaster ORF.
"I'm so proud she made it, she found an occasion to flee," added Ms Sirny in a shaky voice, tears streaming down her face.
Natascha escaped on Wednesday while her kidnapper was distracted, police said. A man police believe to be her captor committed suicide by throwing himself under a train soon after.
She fled a garden outside the house of the kidnapper, who police identified as Wolfgang Priklopil, in Strasshof, a hamlet 25 kilometres outside the capital Vienna, and some 15 kilometres from her home. She showed up in another garden nearby and identified herself to a neighbour.
A police officer said the young woman had told her she had spent nearly every day with her captor, had breakfast with him, helped him gardening and helped with keeping up the house. "He became something of a father figure to her," she said.
Another officer who questioned Natascha said she was forced to call her captor "master" in the first years of her ordeal. Police said it was unclear whether Natascha had been abused.
Police pictures showed the windowless dungeon Natascha had been kept in - a six-square-metre room, hidden underneath the house's garage and reachable only by a vault-like hatch of fortified steel.
The cell, equipped with running water and a toilet, was stacked with shelves full of books, toys, a radio and a TV
Police said they wanted to know details of the relationship between Natascha and the man, given that she appeared to come down with "Stockholm Syndrome," a psychological condition in which long-held captives begin to identify with their captors.