Police release video of missing girl

Toddler Aisling Symes has now been missing for six days. Photo / Supplied

Police searching for missing Auckland toddler Aisling Symes today released "heartbreaking" footage of the tot dancing.

The two-year-old has been missing for five days, disappearing about 5.15pm last Monday from outside her deceased grandparents' home in Longburn Rd, Henderson. Police strongly suspect she has been abducted.

"While it is heartbreaking footage to see given the current circumstances, we feel it humanises Aisling even more than a still photograph can and shows her in other clothes to that which she has been seen in on posters and in the media over the past five days," Inspector Gary Davey said.

About 60 police were investigating Aisling's disappearance but Mr Davey admitted that the most recent sighting of her was still that of her with an unidentified Asian woman walking a black and grey medium-sized dog in Longburn Rd last Monday.

Staff were working tirelessly, he said. Several "people of interest" had been profiled by the intelligence section and suspect team but there was no "strong information that might lead us directly to Aisling".

Mrs Symes told a press conference yesterday she had been inspecting a washing machine with Aisling and her elder daughter, Caitlin, five, in tow.

"I turned off the hot tap, looked behind me and she was there watching what Caty and I were up to.

"I turned off the cold tap looked behind me and she was gone - that fast."

She leapt out the door screaming out Aisling's name, but there was no trace of her.

"I just can't believe that she moved so quickly. In the time it took just to turn off a tap, she was gone."

Mrs Symes had a message for her daughter's abductor.

"She's not a doll. She's somebody who loves her parents, her family, her sister, her pets. She belongs with us. She needs to be back with us.

"We miss her terribly and no matter what reason you took her, whatever you're going through, look what you're putting her through, look what you're putting us through."

Meanwhile, the parents of missing British girl Madeleine McCann expressed their sympathy to Aisling's family.

Doctors Gerry and Kate McCann had conveyed their best wishes to Alan and Angela Symes for the safe return of Aisling, the British Press Association reported.

Madeleine McCann disappeared in May 2007 just days short of her fourth birthday from a holiday flat in Portugal as her parents dined at a nearby restaurant. Despite a massive worldwide hunt she has never been found.

- NZPA