Please help us bring my Gaia home, begs mother
Someone may be holding her captive, she warns
THE mother of missing teenager Gaia Pope yesterday begged for help to ‘ bring her home’ and warned she could be ‘ hidden against her will’.
Natasha Pope said her 19-year -old daughter could be in the ‘ backs of vans or in garages’ as the search entered its ninth day.
On Monday, Rosemary Dinch, 71, and her actor grandson Nathan Elsey, 19, who went to school with Gaia, were arrested on suspicion of killing her , but they were released pending further inquiries 24 hours later.
Yesterday, Dorset P olice released new CCTV footage of the teenager taken in a petrol station near Swanage, Dorset, less than an hour before her last confirmed sighting on November 7. She was being driven between her home in Langton Matravers and nearby Swanage by a relative when they stopped at a garage. Gaia can be seen going into the garage to buy an ice cream at 2.55pm before leaving.
In a post on F acebook yesterday, Miss Pope, 53, made an emotional plea for information about her daughter.
The actress, who has appeared in The Bill and Inspector Morse, wrote: ‘Backs of vans, in garages, somewhere she could be hidden, against her will. In a house... keep looking, be bold with respect.’
In another post, she said: ‘Gaia is special indeed, so we best crack on to discover the truth of things so we may bring her home very soon.’
Gaia’s cousin, Marienna P ope-Wiedemann, 26, suggested that Nathan Elsey could not have been involved in her disappearance. She said: ‘Nathan and Gaia were friends. They went to school together. I can’t believe he has any reason to hurt her.’
Miss P ope-Wiedemann made a direct appeal to Gaia, saying: ‘Nobody is angry with you. W e just want to know you are all right.’
Gaia was last seen on CCTV on November 7 at 3.40pm, when she was captured sprinting down a road in Swanage before banging on Mrs Dinch’s front door.
The new CCTV images show Gaia wearing a black jacket, which she was not wearing in her last sighting.
Police later recovered the coat at the first-floor flat Mrs Dinch shares with her son Paul Elsey, 49.
Nathan Elsey, a performing arts student, lives with his mother Deb - bie, 50, in a flat behind his grand - mother’s property.
A family friend described him as a ‘gentle young man who doesn ’t go out much’. Police teams have been searching the homes of Nathan Elsey and Mrs Dinch since their arrests. Yesterday, investigators were spotted removing parts of piping and toilet fixtures from Mrs Dinch’s home. Police have also been seen wading through a nearby millpond. Shortly before her arrest on Monday, Mrs Dinch, a cook in the maternity unit at Swanage Hospital, wept in a television interview as she told how she gave Gaia a hug after she pounded on her door begging for help. She said: ‘She was just upset. Very upset... I have no idea where she is. She just seems to have disappeared.’ She and Nathan Elsey , who appeared as an extra in the film Dunkirk, were released under investiga - tion, the equivalent of being on bail. Gaia, who suffers from severe epi - lepsy and is described as vulnerable, had been staying with her aunt in Swanage and was studying social care at college. The teenager’s mother lives with her father, Richard Sutherland, in Langton Matravers.
‘She could be hidden against her will’