KEY POINTS:
At a little after midday yesterday, in an anonymous-looking ground-floor council flat in the Batley Carr district of Dewsbury, the dream that Karen Matthews had tried so desperately to keep alive for 24 days suddenly came true.
Arriving at the flat accompanied by specialist search officers, detectives from West Yorkshire Police smashed down the door. Neighbours looked on as officers dragged out 39-year-old Michael Donovan.
Nothing, however, could have prepared the neighbours for the next sight. As police drove the man away, another officer emerged from the house holding a small girl with mousy brown hair tightly in his arms. "Have they found her?" one neighbour called out. The officer simply replied, "Yes, it is Shannon. She is safe."
It was Shannon Matthews, a 9-year-old West Yorkshire girl who had been missing since February 19 after going on a swimming trip. When police found her, she was hidden in the base of a bed.
As the forensic science teams entered No 26 Lidgate Gardens, less than 1.6km from where Shannon was last seen, David Hughes, who lives at No 12, watched in amazement. His voice cracking with emotion, the 46-year-old recalled the moment he saw her emerge from the flat, dressed in the clothes she had been wearing the day she went missing.
"I had heard a bit of noise and went outside to see what was going on. The next thing I saw was the door being smashed in and the police going in. A few minutes later I saw two police officers drag him out. He had handcuffs on and wasn't walking. He was moaning saying he'd done nothing wrong.
"After that little Shannon came walking out behind him. She was wearing a blue coat and trousers; it looked like what she had been wearing in the CCTV pictures. She wasn't crying or anything." Before the police could sweep her away from onlookers, Hughes said, he heard her say to one of the officers, "He made me sleep in the same bed as him".
"He" was Michael Donovan, a tall, thin man with black cropped hair whom locals described as a "loner". Arrested immediately under suspicion of abducting Shannon, he is said to be the uncle of Shannon's stepfather Craig Meehan. Police were apparently called to his ground-floor flat after an upstairs neighbour heard footsteps and a child's voice while he was out. Although Donovan has two children of his own, both are thought to have been taken into care.
Residents on Moorside Rd, where Shannon lived with her mother, Karen, and stepfather, could barely contain their delight or shock at the safe return of a girl they had all campaigned so vigorously to find.
Neighbours celebrated the news of the missing girl's return with an impromptu street party. Music blared from a stereo system as they drank beer and wine. A banner hanging from the window of one house read: "Welcome back, Shannon."
Shannon's uncle, Neil Hyett, 36, who lives next door to the Matthews, said: "I was the one who phoned her dad. He couldn't believe it. Like me he was nearly crying."
The degree of shock shown by Shannon's supporters is more than understandable considering how long she had been missing. The chances of finding an abducted child safe rapidly diminish after a day. According to one study of abducted children in the United States 91 per cent of those who are killed by their captors are murdered within the first 24 hours.
Ever since Shannon disappeared West Yorkshire Police's elite Homicide and Major Enquiry Team was in charge of the search, indicating how unlikely they thought finding Shannon alive would be.
Davinia Darch, manager of the UK Police National Missing Persons Bureau, said it was extremely unusual. "With a young child you would hope to find them very early on; the first six hours are crucial," she said.
"Unlike teenagers, they do not tend to go missing of their own intent. They are abducted and unless you know it's not a parental abduction, for instance, sadly you would expect to find a body after a short period of time."
Yesterday's dramatic rescue was the final chapter in a case that had gripped a nation and shone an uncomfortable spotlight on the media and British society's double standards when reporting on the often-uncomfortable circumstances of a broken home.
Shannon was last seen in public shortly after 3.10pm on February 19 on what was meant to be just another school day. She had just returned to West Moor Junior School from a swimming lesson at the local pool and set off for her home in Dewsbury Moor, a short 10-minute walk away. The final CCTV footage, taken as she left the Dewsbury swimming pool, showed she was wearing a puffer jacket with a fur-lined hood, a blue school top and furry pink and grey Bratz boots - clothing similar to what residents of Lidgate Gardens said she was wearing when rescued.
But Shannon never made it home and her mother became increasingly worried. She placed a tearful call to police at 6.48pm. As the media descended upon Dewsbury en masse, West Yorkshire Police launched what would become the largest manhunt since the search for the Yorkshire Ripper more than 20 years ago.
Until her discovery in the drawer of a divan bed yesterday, 60 detectives and 300 uniformed officers were involved in the search for Shannon alongside half of the entire force of specialist sniffer dogs available to UK police. As the days wore on, and media coverage of Shannon's disappearance became increasingly sporadic, there was widespread criticism that her case was not garnering the coverage it deserved because Shannon came from a working-class home with a complicated family history.
Critics drew inevitable comparisons with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann that received blanket coverage from the mainstream media last summer. Police are believed to have found Shannon acting on a call from Julie France, who lives in the same street as Donovan. Speaking to reporters yesterday France, who has eight children, said she thought she saw Shannon on the day she disappeared but initially thought her mind was playing tricks on her. Only when she came across a discarded bag with a swimming towel in it while out walking her dog did she make the connection and decide to contact the police.
"As soon as I made the connection something clicked in my brain," she said. "Suddenly I realised the day I spotted [the girl] must have been Tuesday 19th, the day she went missing."
She said police officers visited her two days ago and then started knocking on doors in the area, leading them to a neighbour in the flat above where Shannon was found who then told police she had heard a child's voice in the room below.
- INDEPENDENT
