The parents of two missing 10-year-old schoolgirls, Charlene Lunnon and Lisa Hoodless, were reunited with their daughters yesterday just as hopes of finding them alive were beginning to fade.
Relief at finding the two girls alive, three days after they disappeared while walking the short distance from their homes in St Leonards near Hastings in East Sussex to school, was clearly evident in the reaction of Charlene's father, Mr Keith Lunnon, who said he screamed with delight when he heard the news: "I was thinking the blacker side of things and now it has all turned around."
The two girls were discovered "safe and well" by police officers in the south coast resort town of Eastbourne, east Sussex, about 12 miles from St Leonards. Sussex police later confirmed that a 46-year-old man from Eastbourne had been arrested and was in custody in Hastings. The man is not a relative of either family and police have refused to comment on whether the girls were sexually abused.
The police officer leading the investigation, Det Supt Jeremy Paine, of Sussex police, told a press conference at Hastings police station that the girls were "alive and well" but they had been through an ordeal. He said gathering information about what had happened to the girls while they had been away from home would be a very long process.
At the press conference, Mr Lunnon spoke of the "joyful" moment when he was reunited with Charlene at a local police station: "She ran right up to me and gave me a big hug. I said `I love you.' " When the girls failed to turn up for school on Tuesday, the police operation to locate them, which was the largest in the history of the Sussex police, involved 50 Gurkhas, 300 police officers and local volunteers. Police and troops searched parks, cliff tops and the local area with no success and as early as yesterday morning police were clearly gloomy about the girls' prospects.
The girls' families criticised officials at Christ Church primary school for not informing them that their daughters were not at their lessons until several hours after school began.
The head teacher, Ms Anne Hanney, believed the children were simply away from school because of the recent flu outbreak but said she welcomed efforts to tighten up procedures.