Widespread search for Amy to start today

POLICE, helicopters and sniffer dogs will carry out a huge search today of the area in Malaga where 15-year-old Amy Fitzpatrick was last seen eight days ago.

Later in the day, her mother Audrey plans to hold a press conference to appeal for anyone withinformation about her daughter to come forward.

The 38-year-old Dublin woman was described by friends as being “distraught” yesterday following rumours a body had been found that matched the description of dark-haired Amy.

Local police denied the reports and a spokesman for Ms Fitzpatrick said they could not understand how such reports could have come about.

So far, the search has been low-key with police carrying out door-to-door inquiries in the Calahonda area, where Amy walkedtowards home at about 10pm on January 1 from a friend’s house.

Using her usual route — an unlit path over waste ground — the journey should have taken her 10 minutes.

But she never arrived and it was not until friends came looking for Amy the following day that her family realised she was missing.

Posters have been distributed to shops and hotels in the area, which is heavily populated with foreigners, and a hotline has been set up and is being managed by family friends, including Ms Fitzpatrick’s sisters, Bernadine and Barbara, who arrived earlier this week.

Today, following the end of Christmas celebrations on the Costa del Sol, up to 200 members of the Civil Guard and Protección Civil will converge on the area from various towns in the region to launch a widespread search for clues. Volunteers will also be welcome and the town hall has printed maps of the area for anybody wishing to help.

They have been asked to gather at a football pitch in the village of Cala de Mijas and to spend the day with police combing an area about 6km wide.

Franco Rey, spokesman for the family, said: “Police from many places, including Seville, two helicopters and dogs, are expected to take part in the search and afterwards Amy’s mother will make a statement andanswer any questions at a press conference.

“But she was devastated by rumours that were not true that Amy’s body had been found,” he said.

Amy and her 17-year-old brother Dean joined their mother Audrey and her partner Dave Mahon in Calahonda a little more than three years ago after they moved from Donaghmede, Dublin.

Friends have said she was unhappy in Spain and had not gone to school for more than a year.

She was particularly upset when a planned visit to Dublin on St Stephen’s Day to visit her father Christopher was cancelled.

He issued a statement on Monday in Dublin appealing for her to contact him.

She does not have apassport of her own and was not carrying any money after she left her friend’s house.

The friend, Ashley Rose, said strangers had offered lifts to both of them and to other young girls in the area over the past few months. There were unconfirmed reports yesterday that a girl had gone missing six months ago.