6toe.com

A young woman has told police she escaped a kidnapper after being held for eight years in a sealed garage, apparently resolving a missing child case that shook Austria.

Police said relatives identified her as Natascha Kampusch, who vanished in 1998 aged 10 while walking to school.

Her suspected kidnapper, Wolfgang Priklopil, 44, a communications technician, died after throwing himself in front of a Vienna commuter train when a manhunt for him was under way, police said.

The head of the Federal Crime Office, Herwig Haidinger, said the woman was undergoing DNA tests to confirm her identity but that investigators were almost certain she was Ms Kampusch. Her passport was found in the cellar and she bore an identifying scar.

She met her mother yesterday for the first time since 1998.

Her father, Ludwig Koch, who split from her mother before the kidnapping, said he was overcome after being told his daughter had been found.

“I can’t believe that after eight desperate years my daughter is finally coming home. If it is true it will be the greatest thing that could possibly be.”