herald

Saturday 18 May 2013

Family's emotional plea for return of missing girl Tia (12)

THE family of missing schoolgirl Tia Sharp have made an emotional plea for her to return home as the hunt for the youngster stretches into its fourth day.

Tia (12) was last seen leaving her grandmother's home in New Addington, south-east London, at around midday on Friday after telling relatives she was going to the Whitgift Centre in Croydon town centre.



Urged

Police have been scouring hours of CCTV footage but said they had not found any trace of Tia, who has never gone missing before.

The youngster's uncle David Sharp urged anyone who knows of his niece's whereabouts to come forward as Scotland Yard released a new CCTV image of Tia taken the day before she vanished.

Mr Sharp (28) said: "I want to say to Tia, 'I just want you to come home. You're not in any trouble'. Anyone who knows where she is or has any information, please come to us or please phone the police."

Scotland Yard said there had been 55 reports of sightings of Tia, although these are yet to be confirmed.

Detective Chief Inspector Nick Scola, from the Metropolitan Police's Homicide and Serious Crime Command, said the youngster spent a lot of time at her grandmother Christine Sharp's house and the last person to see Tia was her grandmother's partner.

Tia went there the previous day after travelling by tram, with her grandmother's partner meeting her halfway in East Croydon.

hnews@herald.ie

Opinion

Entertainment News

the beatles

The Beatles started a revolution back in the USSR

If ever a band has been well served by the literary world it's The Beatles. Practically every aspect of that revolutionary body of work has been dealt with in book form... or so one would have thought. From Hunter Davies' The Beatles, through Philip Norman's Shout, Bob Spitz's humongously detailed history and Ian McDonald's brilliant Revolution in the Head, which offered a musical and contextual analysis of every song they ever recorded, surely there's nothing left of interest to diehard fans of the Fabs. Well, think again.