LOST FOR FOUR DAYS

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24151, 10 January 1944, Page 2

LOST FOR FOUR DAYS

LITTLE GIRL OUT ON

BEACH

EXPOSURE CAUSES SOME INJURY

(P.A.) NEW PLYMOUTH, Jan. 9. After being four days and three nights in the open, clad only in a bathing costume, Colleen Trotl, the eight years old daughter of Mr and Mrs C. E. Trott, Hawera, was found at 3 p.m, to-day on Waihi Beach, four miles south of Ohawe Beach, Hawera, where she was last seen at 2 p.rri. on Wednesday. The finders were J. Garvey and D. Cameron, one of whom recognised the child after she had asked to be directed to a bathing shed. She had had no food and said she had had no water. She was severely sunburned and blistered, and her bathing costume was torn and parts of the body scratched, but Dr. A. M. Young said that in view of exposure and absence of food, she was in remarkably good condition. , , ~ When she disappeared at Ohawe, the girl was playing with her brother Colin, aged nine years, and Mervyn Gates, aged nine years, near the recent fall of earth below the cliffs about 200 yards from the entrance of the beach, in the direction of Schnapper Bay. The boys, it was stated, decided to return to their mothers at Ohawe Beach proper, but the girl refused to do so. The boys were questioned about her whereabouts and were sent back to get her. They returned with the news that she was nowhere to be seen. It was feared that if the girl was not in the sea she had been buried in one of the slips, which have recently fallen from the cliff. Her explanation yesterday was that she had fallen asleep when her brother left her and had become lost. In the meantime the whole 1 coast area had been searched.