Spanish police have begun an investigation after an expatriate teenager disappeared on her way home from a nearby friend’s house.
Amy Fitzpatrick, 15, has not been seen since the evening of New Year’s Day, when she left the friend’s home on the Costa Del Sol.
Officers from the Spanish Civil Guard searched waste ground yesterday in the tourist resort of Riviera Del Sol, near Fuengirola, as part of their hunt for the Irish teenager. The land is close to the route that Amy would have taken on her ten-minute walk back to the home she shares with her mother, brother and stepfather.
She spent New Year’s Eve at her friend’s house, babysitting for the girl’s younger brother, and stayed the night before the pair headed to a local shopping centre on January 1. Amy then returned to the friend’s house before heading home at about 10pm.
Her mother, Audrey, 39, said last night that she had not heard anything from her daughter since a telephone call early on the day she vanished.
“The last time we spoke was on New Year’s Day morning when she rang to wish me happy new year.”
Mrs Fitzpatrick, from Dublin, said that she was starting to fear the worst. “I’ve racked my brains for a reason as to why Amy might want to go off on her own and I can’t think of one. She’s never done anything like this before. We’ve traced the route we think she would have taken but found no clues as to what might have happened to her. It’s a route she knows well and involves a walk of about two minutes down a dirt track.
“All I want is for Amy to pick up a phone and ring me or a friend and say she’s OK but at the back of my mind is that horrible fear that something’s happened to her and she can’t.”
The disappearance has shocked Riviera del Sol’s expatriate community. Police have spoken to the couple that Amy had been babysitting for on New Year’s Eve, an English woman and her Spanish husband. They have also questioned the teenager’s schoolfriends, including a dozen British expatriate families who live in the area.
Mrs Fitzpatrick was preparing last night to distribute hundreds of appeal posters showing her daughter’s face. The teenager’s brother, Dean, 17, had spent the day taking police officers to see friends in the hope that someone had heard from her.
Ritchie Harris, a family friend, said: “Amy is a very pretty girl and although she’s mature for her age and likes to mix with an older crowd, she’s only 15 and still very much of a youngster.” Mr Harris, originally from London, said that he had been helping in the search for Amy, and had spent Thursday night scouring her e-mails and speaking to her friends via the online MSN Messenger service for clues as to her whereabouts.
A police helicopter spent part of yesterday flying over waste ground close to Amy’s home. The land, sandwiched between a motorway running along the Costa del Sol and houses leading down to the Mediterranean, is popular with dog walkers. Amy, who has dark, shoulder-length hair, was wearing a black jacket, dark tracksuit bottoms, a black Diesel T-shirt and black furry boots when she was last seen.
She moved to the Costa del Sol with her mother 3½ years ago. Her step-father, Dave McMahon, is an estate agent in the Spanish resort. It is understood that her natural father lives in the Irish Republic.
A spokesman for the Civil Guard in Málaga was unable to comment on local reports that a stranger driving a white van had been spotted targeting children in the area.
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