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The mother of an Irish teenager found dead in the Malaysian jungle said in an investigation that the police response to his disappearance while on vacation had been slow and ineffective.
The body of 15-year-old Nóra Quoirin was discovered last year after a massive jungle hunt.
Authorities insist there was no foul play, but her parents, Meabh and Sebastien Quoirin, believe that Nóra, who had learning difficulties, was kidnapped because she would not have left alone.
Testifying in the investigation into her daughter’s death, Meabh Quoirin said she “immediately panicked” after realizing that Nóra was not at the resort where her family was staying near the Malaysian border with Thailand.
“I got more and more stressed. The first thought that crossed my mind was that Nora had been kidnapped,” he said via a video link.
Staff at the Dusun Resort began searching for Nóra, who was discovered missing from a chalet the day after arriving at the resort, and reported to the police.
In the afternoon, a police officer arrived at the complex, but Meabh Quoirin, who was unable to attend the investigation in person due to the coronavirus, said that “he did not spend much time there.”
“He had a dog with him and at first we were hopeful, and then absolutely distraught because it was so obvious that this dog was not fit for purpose … really old, really tired.”
Quoirin said a female police officer sent to interview her was not fluent in English and authorities did not want to continue searching after dark on the first day of the hunt, although they eventually agreed.
As the search dragged on for days, the search and rescue team expanded to include hundreds of people.
But Ms Quoirin said she was concerned that the police were not taking the family’s concerns about criminal involvement in the case seriously, noting that officials did not take fingerprints of her chalet for days.
However, the police say they carried out a thorough investigation and insisted that at the beginning of the investigation in August there was no indication that Nóra was abducted.
Nóra’s body was finally found 10 days after her disappearance, not far from the resort.
An autopsy found that he had likely died of starvation and internal bleeding after spending about a week in the rainforest, but his family pushed for the investigation, which is expected to continue until December.
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