’Copters join search for pair on Coromandel

Press, 1 June 1989, Page 1

’Copters join search for pair on Coromandel

PA Wellington The police are planning an extensive search today of the Coromandel Peninsula for two missing Swedish tourists, Mr Sven Urban Hoglin and Ms Heidi Birgitta Paakkonen. The officer in charge, Detective Inspector John Hughes, said the search would centre on the area where clothing belonging to the couple was found this week and would involve helicopters, four-wheel-drive vehicles and between 50 and 60 search and rescue volunteers. “Our intention is to search every track, hut, stream and other place in the area,” he said last evening. An expert in search and rescue planning, Inspector Graeme McColl, of Rotorua, will meet the search and rescue co-ordinator,

Mr John Cassidy, to plan and control the two-day search. A four-wheel-drive club has donated 12 vehicles to help with the search, and a Murupara helicopter owner has given 10 hours free flying time. The police said yesterday that publicity about the tourists’ disappearance had helped them find a man who might have important information about where the missing couple wete in early April. The police media liaison officer, Senior-Sergeant Tony Bouchier, said detectives attached to the inquiry flew to Nelson early yesterday to interview Mr Mark Tonks, aged 21. Mr Hughes said he understood Mr Tonks had confirmed that he saw a four-wheel-drive Subaru vehicle parked in Tararu Creek

Road, Thames, in the Coromandel Peninsula, on or about April 12. He said Mr Tonks volunteered to return to Thames to show the police the exact location where he saw the parked car. The police flew him to Auckland last evening.

“We will take him up Tararu Creek Road and get him to pinpoint exactly where he saw the white Subaru.” He said the car had been seen at the end of Tararu Creek Road late in the afternoon of April 9. The car was apparently secure and there was a "quantity of property” in it at that time. Two supermarket receipts found with the bags of clothing had come from a Tauranga Woolworths and were for food bought on April 3 and 4, Mr Hughes said.