Police were last night interviewing the mother of a 2-year-old girl found outside a McDonald's restaurant on Saturday.
The toddler was spotted outside McDonald's in Otara about midday and had been in the care of police and Children, Youth and Family Services since then. No one had reported the girl missing.
Yesterday afternoon, police urged anyone with information about the girl to come forward.
By 9.30pm last night, the mother and a second relative came forward to claim the child.
The Herald story goes on to report that the girl was seen, alone, at the Otara markets at least an hour and a half before the police were alerted. When first seen, she was eating a lollipop, which would suggest to us that she hadn't been alone for long.
But it raises the question; why did it take so long for anyone in the family to come forward? How is it possible to not notice that a two-year-old is missing for more than two days? We remember back to the days when we had children of that age, and that sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach we experienced if a child vanished for even a moment.
The most important aspect of this case of course is that the child is safe. We're sure that some searching questions will be asked before she is returned to her parents' care.
8 comments:
It's hard to notice anything, when you're pissed or stoned for two days, eh?
I'm loathe to make that call Adolf, but it wouldn't be the first time ..
But on the plus side, at least someone managed to take action when they saw the little one alone - unlike that poor boy that wound up in the river.
It happens everywhere.
In April 2008 mrs pdm and I were at the ANZAC service at Tweed Heads RSL on the NSW?Qld border. After the service finished we were just wandering around and had actully gone in different directions briefly.
It was then I noticed a very tidily dressed boy aged about 3 about to walk on to the busy road that runs past Twin Towns RSL. I grabbed his hand and looked for likely parents. Not a soul to be seen so I took him to a ST Johns Ambulance parked a few metres away. They were packing up and didn't really want to know.
mrs pdm joined me and we went and stood in an opened grassed area and looked for people running round like headless chooks looking for a lost boy. After a while I went into Twin Towns and asked them to put an announcement over.
Still no luck but after a while two police constables came along on bike patrol. We stopped them and told them the story and they left the boy with us and went looking for parents - no luck.
The boy was obviously well cared for and was well dressed, He knew his first name but nothing else.He was quite happy to stay with us and enjoyed a ride on the policemans bike. After about an hour and a half after I first found him the police said they would have to take him to the station and we went on our way. We assume parents were eventually located but don't know for sure.
The missus and I learnt the "but I though he was with you!" lesson very early on.
We never just assume the other has the boys.
Sad for the child, some kids are bron to millionaires and become spoilt brats, others are born to druggies and become the same, can you blame them?
"The most important aspect of this case of course is that the child is safe."
I wouldn't bet much on that. Based on the little that we know so far, I will speculate that CYF is likely to return the unfortunate kid to the "mother" in no time.(In all probability there won't be an identified father.) Unless the mother changes her ways drastically, the kid will have a very poor chance of having a reasonable start in life.
Call this social stereotyping if you like, and I hope that I'm totally wrong. But the "family" circumstances in these cases are all depressingly familiar.
Allow me to explain why this happened. Take a look at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7TjnUkxrCc
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