Police and Lavender Hill residents are still searching for an eight-year-old girl who went missing on her way home from school on Tuesday.
|||Police and Lavender Hill residents are still searching for an eight-year-old girl who went missing on her way home from school on Tuesday.
Hillwood Primary School principal Rachel Claassen said Savannah Tyler Mersin had last been seen outside the school gates at about 3pm by a pupil from a neighbouring school.
Savannah was wearing grey trousers and a white shirt and was carrying a navy-blue rucksack.
When she had not returned home by 5pm, her foster mother, Felicity Coetzee, went to look for her at the school and later went to the Steenberg police station to report her missing.
Western Cape police spokesman Lieutenant Colonel André Traut said police and neighbourhood watch volunteers had searched for Savannah throughout the night, covering most of the Lavender Hill area and surrounds.
Savannah’s classmates had been questioned but the interviews had provided police with no new information, he said.
“There has not been a lot of crime or drama around here for a while, so people are obviously very shocked,” said resident Haroldene Harris. “People are walking to school to personally fetch their children today.”
“I won’t let him out of my sight,” said Portia Veldman yesterday, referring to her young son. “He’ll stay behind locked doors until they find little Savannah.”
Today Traut said police were no closer to finding Savannah. “There had been a potential sighting of the child (yesterday) but we followed the lead to no avail,” he said.
Coetzee, who had been taking care of Savannah since she was a baby, said she last saw her when she left home at 7am on Tuesday.
The family lives a few minutes’ walk from the school.
“She wasn’t unhappy, so I don’t think she would have run away,” she said. - Cape Argus
daneel.knoetze@inl.co.za