Wellington - New Zealand police said Tuesday they feared for
the safety of the mother of a 3-year-old Chinese girl abandoned at a
rail station by her father after he took her to Australia and then
flew to the United States.
Police said they had been to the house in the Auckland suburb of
Mount Roskill where the mother, identified as Anan Liu, 27, was known
to have lived but found no trace of her.
'There are concerns we haven't heard from her at all,' Inspector
Dave Pearson, head of the city's Criminal Investigation Bureau, told
the New Zealand Herald website.
He would not say if police thought the woman had been killed, but
added, 'You can jump to all sorts of conclusions but there are
concerns we haven't heard from her, so yes the inquiry is being
ramped up considerably.'
A police statement said the woman had been listed as a missing
person.
The child was in temporary foster care in Melbourne while US
police were searching for her father, named in media reports as Xue
Naiyin, in his mid-50s and a director of a Chinese publishing company
in Auckland.
The girl was named as Qian Xun Xue, nicknamed Pumpkin because of
the brand of clothing she wore by Australian police, who were called
when she was found crying in Melbourne's Southern Cross station on
Saturday.
New Zealand police visited houses in Auckland and Wellington on
Monday evening but did not find the girl's mother, who was known as
Anni or Annie.
The family were reported to have lived in Mount Roskill, but the
mother and daughter moved to Wellington after the couple split up
last month.
But a family friend was quoted as saying they had since got back
together.
Melbourne Police Inspector Brad Shallies was quoted by the New
Zealand Herald as urging all New Zealanders to study the girl's
photograph, saying that his main concern was finding a relative.
'Have a look at the photo and please contact the police if you are
aware of who the child is or more particularly where her family may
be in New Zealand,' he said.
'Please do not be concerned - although we are a law-enforcement
agency, our focus is really on building some type of family structure
back around the girl.
'I'll worry about any criminal provisions or similar at a later
time.'
Shallies said the girl and her father arrived in Melbourne on New
Zealand passports on Thursday evening, spent two nights in a city
hotel, then went to the railway station on Saturday morning.
Closed-circuit TV camera film shows the girl's father leading her
by the hand and pulling a suitcase behind him at about 8 am.
He is then seen bending down and whispering something in the
child's ear before leaving her at the base of the escalator.
The security film shows him walking away without looking back.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
USA
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