The mother of a missing boy has appealed to anyone with information about his whereabouts to contact the Garda. Gardai were joined by the Civil Defence and rescue services in their search of the river Dee in Ardee, Co Louth, yesterday after another child reported seeing a boy's body in the water on Monday afternoon. Paul McKenny (6) was last seen at 3.10 p.m. on Monday after he left school to meet his mother, Sharon.
Ms McKenny said she hopes that Paul did not go into the river and is still alive even if he was abducted. "At least if someone has taken him they might let him go. I don't think he is in Ardee because everyone knows he is missing and is looking for him," she said.
The river, swollen due to recent heavy rain, was in full flow towards its junction with the Irish Sea at Annagassan. The school is less than 100 yards from a footbridge over the river and yesterday morning three of Paul's schoolbooks were found in the river half a mile downstream from the bridge.
However, his parents believe he would not have gone near the river. Ms McKenny said: "He hurt himself near the river a few weeks before he went back to school this year and he had to have stitches put in under a general anaesthetic. He told me and his father that he hates the river because he fears needles and hospitals." Paul met his mother each afternoon at the traffic lights at the end of the lane which forms a shortcut from the school for children going towards Ardee. It was about a 10-minute walk for him but, she added, "his teacher kept him back to help tidy the classroom and when he left at 3.10 p.m. she told him to go straight home and he ran to meet me. I walked past the bridge at 3.15 p.m. and would have seen him. I was at the school at 3.30 p.m. and myself and the teacher went round the town looking for him."
Gardai were alerted about his disappearance at 5.15 p.m. Some time later a 12-year-old girl said she thought she had seen a boy's body in the river and a full-scale search began. Ms McKenny's fears that her child might have been abducted were fuelled by gardai in Dundalk warning parents to be vigilant after a man approached a number of girls on Saturday evening.
A Garda spokesman said, however, they were concentrating on the possibility that the boy went into the water; they had not received any reports of a man in the area similar to the suspect in Dundalk. Anyone with information is asked to contact Ardee Garda Station on 041-53222.