The family of eight-year-old Savannah Tyler Mersin has sent a desperate plea for her safe return home.
|||While the search continues for eight-year-old Savannah Tyler Mersin, her family have sent a desperate plea to whoever may have snatched her, to bring her safely home.
On Thursday relatives and residents scoured bushes and a section of a vlei near the home.
Provincial police spokes-man Lieutenant Colonel Andrè Traut said the search continued and all leads were being investigated.
“It’s always a high priority for the SA police when a child goes missing. We won’t give up until we find her,” he said.
The little girl went missing on Tuesday, when she did not return home after choir practice at Hillwood Primary School in Lavender Hill.
She was still wearing her school uniform when she was last seen outside the school gates at about 3pm.
Foster mother Felicity Coetzee, 63, said she had mixed emotions. “Sometimes I’m so fearful that she might be hurt or wishing for my help to get her back home to us.
“Then you have hope again, but you just don’t know how the child will look when you see them again.”
Coetzee said she had raised Savannah from birth. Her father had died seven years ago from a brain tumour.
She said Savannah was not the type of child who would stay away from home without her knowing where she was. “Even when she came from school, she would first come put her bag down and then go play with the kids outside,” added Coetzee.
The foster mother’s daughter, Katrina Coetzee, 41, said she helped to raised the little girl and has had sleepless nights since her disappearance.
“You can’t actually sleep just thinking it’s an innocent child who can’t fend for themselves.
“I just want to say to that person who might have kidnapped her to please search deep in their hearts and send Savannah home to her family,” she pleaded.
Savannah’s biological mother, Jessica Mersin, 31, said she hoped that the police would have some success from CCTV footage collected at the school and another pupil who claimed to have spotted daughter walking with a “young” man.
Mersin said she still held on to the belief and the “feeling in her heart” that Savannah was alive.
janis.kinnear@inl.co.za - Cape Argus