New Zealand police search for dumped toddler's mother (1st Lead)

Sep 17, 2007, 23:05 GMT

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.