Father’s anguish over missing Aisling

THE utter wretchedness of an Irish father was plain to see as he told a press conference he and his family were “barely existing” as they awaited news on their two-year-old daughter who is missing from her New Zealand home for nearly five days.

Aisling Symes was with her parents, Waterford-born Allan Symes and his New Zealand wife, Angela, at her grandparents’ vacant home in Henderson, West Auckland, when she disappeared at about 5.30pm. After a thorough search of the area, it’s now feared she was abducted. It was initially thought that Aisling might have wandered off and slipped into a nearby stream.

Mr Symes described the days since her disappearance as “the most harrowing of our lives”.