Praia da Luz waiter decribes 'night of madness'

A waiter from the restaurant where the McCanns ate on the evening their daughter Madeleine disappeared has described how a normal night “became madness”, according to reports today.

Jose Baptiste, 45, waited on Kate and Gerry McCann and a group of their friends at the tapas bar at The Ocean Club, in Praia da Luz, Portugal, on May 3.

The alarm was raised around 10pm that evening after Mrs McCann went to check on Madeleine and twins Sean and Amelie, who were asleep in the family’s holiday apartment.

Madeleine was not in her bed and a search was launched.

“It had been a normal night. Then it became madness,” Mr Baptiste, 45, told the Sun newspaper.

“Then I heard shouting and terrible screaming from the apartments and my colleague told me a child had gone missing.

“After that is was chaos. People were running around shouting for Maddie and we all started to help looking for her.”

Mr Baptiste said it was the fourth night that the group had dined at the tapas bar and it had been usual that the men checked on the children around every 20 minutes.

He said he only remembered Mrs McCann leaving the table on the night Madeleine disappeared.

Portuguese police are poised to reinterview friends of the McCanns who dined with them on the evening of their daughter’s disappearance.

Officers will travel to the UK with a public prosecutor “in days”, Policia Judiciaria national director Alipio Ribeiro told Spanish newspaper El Pais.

It is reported the interviews will be conducted using questions written by the Portuguese detectives. Their inquiries have been supported by police in the UK, led by the force in the McCanns’ home county of Leicestershire.

Mr McCann welcomed the news on his blog on the website www.findmadeleine.com.

“We welcome the announcement from Mr Ribeiro, the National director of the Judicial Police in Portugal, that our friends who were on holiday with us in Portugal are to be re-interviewed,” he wrote.

“We do not know how many other 'witnesses' will be interviewed but obviously we want to be eliminated from the inquiry as soon as possible. We constantly hope that one of the other lines of investigation leads to Madeleine being found safe and well.”

The McCanns insist that Madeleine, four, was abducted while they ate at a nearby Tapas bar with friends Rachael and Matthew Oldfield, Jane Tanner and her partner, Russell O’Brien, David and Fiona Payne, and Mrs Payne’s mother, Dianne Webster.