Missing New Zealand toddler found dead

Oct 12, 2009, 20:08 GMT

Wellington - New Zealand police confirmed Tuesday that they had found the body of a 2-year-old girl who they thought had been kidnapped in a drain close to the place she disappeared a week ago.

The body recovered on Monday evening was identified as Aisling Symes, who had been missing since October 5.

Police said they had not immediately ruled out foul play, but indications were that the girl, who had been seen chasing ducklings near a stream before she disappeared, drowned accidentally.

Neighbours were asking how a child missing for a week and feared taken by kidnappers could be found only metres from where she disappeared, the New Zealand Herald reported.

Police hunting for the daughter of Irish immigrant Alan Symes and his wife, Angela, said last week they were confident she was not in the area where her body was found.

Two days after she disappeared, police inspector Gary Davey said police were increasingly convinced she had been abducted and called on the kidnapper to return her.

He told reporters on Tuesday that the stormwater drain where the girl's body was found after diggers and concrete cutting equipment were called in had been searched several times after she was reported missing.

Davey said an Asian woman with a dog who two witnesses said they saw talking to the child as she played near the house where her parents were working had been identified and police were trying to trace her.