Anxious families fear for their children

Debbie Usher walked until her feet were blistered as she and family members helped in the hunt for Aisling. Photo / Steven McNicholl

There was an underlying anxiety on Longburn Rd last night.

Many people in the modest homes around the renovated house from which 2-year-old Aisling Symes disappeared were getting on with daily life.

But in the back of their minds lurked the thought "What if it was my child?"

"I've got kids of my own. I'd like to think people would help if I lost one of my children," said resident Debbie Usher.

Ms Usher was involved with Monday night's frantic search and had been circulating photos of little Aisling in Henderson.

The mother of two said she joined the search for Aisling at the beginning and got blisters on her feet after treading through the little creek at the back of the property.

A retired policeman, who has lived on Kingsdale Rd for more than 40 years, said it looked increasingly as though Aisling had been kidnapped.

He believed if she had fallen into the stream, which was running high on Monday night, her body was likely to have been recovered by now.

The stream runs into a culvert a little way down from Longburn Road. Its galvinised steel covering would have stopped the little girl being washed further toward Taikata Inlet.

Other residents on Kingsdale St, whose properties back on to the stream, were told by police to check under their houses and the back of their sections. Some said officers had checked their homes.

Elsewhere, it appeared life was carrying on more or less as normal. But many residents pre-empted Herald inquiries with their own question: have they found her yet?

The area around Longburn Rd is an area of families and children, and word had gone out to neighbourhood daycare centres to be extra vigilant.

Shirley Powell, of nearby Rathgar Rd, said she hadn't been able to sleep since Aisling's disappearance. "If I had seen a little girl I would walk up to her and say 'where's your Mum?'."

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