Malaysian divers scour river for missing teen
SEREMBAN: Malaysian divers scoured a river on Wednesday, joining a large team hunting for a Franco-irish teenager with learning difficulties who vanished from a rainforest resort.
Nora Quoirin went missing on Sunday morning after checking in with her family to the Dusun Resort, about an hour from the capital Kuala Lumpur. Family members said they found the window of her room open in the morning without any trace of her.
The 15-year-old lives in London and is the daughter of a Francoirish couple.
Her family suspect foul play, but the Malaysian government has stressed police do not believe she was abducted and are calling for an end to speculation about her disappearance.
As the hunt entered a fourth day on Wednesday, a small team of divers searched a river running through the forest near the resort, AFP journalists at the scene said.
A helicopter, two drones, sniffer dogs and 214 people from various government agencies had already been deployed in the hunt for the girl. Che Zakaria Othman, Deputy Police Chief of Negeri Sembilan state where the resort is located, said around 20 witnesses, including family members, had been interviewed.
Forensics experts were also able to take fingerprints from the window panel of the girl’s bedroom but did not say who they belonged to, he told reporters in the state capital Seremban.
“We are not ruling out any possibilities but so far we don’t have any information,” he added.
“We still believe she is in the area because there is no information that says she has left.”
Police have classified her disappearance as a missing person case, but her grandfather, Sylvain Quoirin, said on Tuesday that she had gone in “extremely mysterious” circumstances and was not in the habit of running off.
“In the morning, the window was open and she had disappeared,” Quoirin said by phone from Venisy, in north-central France where he is the mayor.