Missing woman search in new phase
Police believe a missing Te Awamutu woman is dead.
Kim Richmond disappeared from her Arohena home, near Te Awamutu, on the morning of July 31, 2016, and hasn’t been seen since.
Waikato police launched an extensive search for Richmond, including scouring Lake Arapuni last year for any sign of her or her vehicle.
On Monday, the police national dive squad began another search of Lake Arapuni.
Detective Senior Sergeant Ross Patterson, of the Waikato CIB, said they wanted to search areas they were not able to access before.
‘‘Despite our extensive inquiry we still hope to find her, though we now believe she is dead,’’ Patterson said.
On Monday morning, a team of 13 divers and two skippers scoured the causeway above the Arapuni Dam.
Patterson said the Arapuni power station was shut down to allow the dive squad to safely search the lake.
‘‘We’re searching areas that may have been accessible by a vehicle. If there’s a possibility that the vehicle could have access then we’re going to search it with divers.
‘‘We’d like to recover the truck and we’d like to recover Kim. That would be nice to have some closure for her family.’’
Patterson said the dive squad planned to search the lake today as well.
‘‘We just want to make sure that we’ve covered everywhere, it’s not necessarily from tip-offs. We just want to make sure that we’ve left no stone unturned basically.
The search was a new phase of Operation Viaduct, the investigation into Richmond’s disappearance.
Richmond’s mother, Raywynne Richmond, said the family is coping well.
‘‘We’re doing as best we can,’’ she said from her Te Puke home.
‘‘My daughter was a beautiful woman, a beautiful mother and partner.’’
She and the family will stay put in Te Puke and wait to hear from police at the conclusion of the search.
‘‘Police have kept us up to date with what has been going on and we have faith in them.’’
In October last year, police asked Mercury Energy to drop the water levels at Lake Arapuni to allow a thorough search of the area.
The nine square-kilometre lake is part of the hydro-electricity scheme on the Waikato River. It took four days to drop the lake by two metres.
Boats searched the fringes while the police Eagle helicopter was brought from Auckland to scour the lake from the air. Police worked to a four-hour window from 8am-12pm on Monday before lake levels rose.
The silver Ford Ranger ute (registration HKD553), that Richmond is believed to have been in, remains missing.