Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Military teams tell inquest no trace of teen
WITHIN 24 hours of Nora Quoirin going missing, specialist units had searched the area where her body was eventually found, her inquest heard yesterday.
It was 10 days after her parents raised the alarm that Nora, who had special needs, was found dead.
The 15-year-old vanished from the family holiday villa in a nature reserve after arriving in Malaysia in August 2019 with her Belfastborn mother Meabh and French father Sebastian.
He alerted authorities on August 4 when he discovered his daughter missing from her bedroom at 8am. The window had been opened.
At the hearing in Kuala Lumpur yesterday, the coroner heard specialist units from the
Fire and Rescue Department – known as Bomba – were deploy- ed a day after her parents called for help.
Its commander Ahmad Mukhlis Mukhtar confirmed to the court rescue crew had searched the surroundings.
He said: “Our personnel had actually entered the area where the body was eventually found but could not find any traces of the girl at that time and I was informed by my officers on the ground.” He added t h e a re a wa s a l s o included in the large-scale search-and-rescue operation over the following days.
Mr Mukhlis said the department received an application from the police to deploy their PPDA divers specialised in water rescue on the understanding Nora could have entered the water and drowned.
Another application was also made for the use of cadaver dogs to track a body at a specific area.
Fire and Rescue Department Multi-skill Team officer Hizwan Khalil testified he had entered the area where Nora’s body would eventually be found on August 5.
He said there were no positive indications of her at the time of their search.
Hundreds of people joined the hunt for Nora but, despite their best efforts, her body was discovered close to the jungle retreat.
A postmortem found she most likely died from internal bleeding and lack of food after spending about a week in the dense rainforest.