Austrian kidnapped girl safely home

VIENNA – Austrian Natascha Kampusch said all she could think of during her eight year kidnap ordeal was how to escape from her “hen battery” and that she was afraid of sparking a killing spree with her flight, Austrian media said.

For the first time since her dash to freedom two weeks ago, Kampusch told Austrian magazine News and daily Kronen-Zeitung about the years she spent in a cell beneath the garage of Wolfgang Priklopil’s house in a commuter town outside Vienna. “I asked myself again and again ‘why among all the million people did this happen to me?’,” Kampusch told News.Priklopil had locked Kampusch in the windowless 6-sq-metre cell in his house in Strasshoff, some 25 km outside the capital, after abducting her on her way to school in 1998.”I felt like a chicken in a hen battery,” Kampusch added.”I promised myself that I would never lose the thought of escape.””I always thought that I wasn’t born to be locked up and to have my life ruined completely,” she said.”I despaired about this injustice.”The details of one of Austria’s most notorious crimes have kept the nation spellbound since Kampusch escaped from her abductor while he took a phone call outside his house.He committed suicide shortly after by jumping under a train.A first television interview with Kampusch will be broadcast at 8.15 p.m.(1815 GMT) on state broadcaster ORF.News and Kronen-Zeitung also were the first to publish pictures of the young woman at the centre of national soul-searching and an international media frenzy.News shows the now 18-year-old with baby-blue eyes and a bright smile talking to reporters and strolling through the garden of the hospital where she is shielded from media and cared for by doctors and psychiatrists.Nampa-Reuters”I asked myself again and again ‘why among all the million people did this happen to me?’,” Kampusch told News.Priklopil had locked Kampusch in the windowless 6-sq-metre cell in his house in Strasshoff, some 25 km outside the capital, after abducting her on her way to school in 1998.”I felt like a chicken in a hen battery,” Kampusch added.”I promised myself that I would never lose the thought of escape.””I always thought that I wasn’t born to be locked up and to have my life ruined completely,” she said.”I despaired about this injustice.”The details of one of Austria’s most notorious crimes have kept the nation spellbound since Kampusch escaped from her abductor while he took a phone call outside his house.He committed suicide shortly after by jumping under a train.A first television interview with Kampusch will be broadcast at 8.15 p.m.(1815 GMT) on state broadcaster ORF.News and Kronen-Zeitung also were the first to publish pictures of the young woman at the centre of national soul-searching and an international media frenzy.News shows the now 18-year-old with baby-blue eyes and a bright smile talking to reporters and strolling through the garden of the hospital where she is shielded from media and cared for by doctors and psychiatrists.Nampa-Reuters