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Melissa Ewings, 31, has been missing in the Clarence area for almost two weeks.
The cell phone of a missing woman was found near the Clarence River, north of Kaikōura.
Melissa Ewings, 31, has not been seen since she told a friend she was going for a walk along the Clarence River on September 20.
Ewings did not show up for work the next day, prompting police and search and rescue teams to begin searching the river and surrounding farmland. Police narrowed the physical search to focus on gathering leads in the “broader investigation phase” starting Tuesday.
Sergeant Major Peter Payne confirmed that police found Ewings’ cell phone on Saturday, along with other items of interest.
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The cell phone and the items were being analyzed, Payne said.
Police were urging anyone with information to contact 105, citing file number 200922/5064.
Marlborough land search and rescue teams had been working at the site since September 22, supporting the Kaikōura team as well as the Christchurch, Hanmer Springs and Murchison teams.
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Melissa Ewings worked as a beekeeper in Clarence, north of Kaikōura, before disappearing.
Marlborough LandSAR President Peter Hamill said much of the land surrounding the river was high ground and the river had run high and dirty after recent rain.
“We started with some of the last places she was seen, and the places she could have gone… we searched the area near her home and other points of interest, places she was known to frequent. Then you start looking further afield, ”Hamill said.
“One of the things we know about searches… most of the clues of relevance are within 300 meters of their last known points. So the teams went down and covered the 300-meter area carefully, looking for specific clues. “
Detective Sergeant Major Ciaran Sloan said there was no reason to suspect a dirty act. It was more likely a “misadventure,” considering all the facts at hand, he said.
A fisherman fishing for salmon at the mouth of the Clarence River was washed out to sea by a rogue wave in 2016.
A medical examiner discovered that the man could have survived if he had been wearing a life jacket.
The man was fishing from a small gravel sandbar between the river and the sea, wearing chest-length wellies with rubber boots.
His friend was fishing off a rock about 30 meters away when he heard the man screaming and saw a large “monster” wave crash over him, knocking the man over and throwing him into the river.
People on a local fishing boat pulled it out of the water about 400 meters south of the river mouth.
Clarence’s farmer, John Reader, helped pull that man out of the sea.
His son had hired Ewings to work at his new cafe along the Kaikōura coast two or three months before closing.
Reader said his son told him Ewings felt “uncomfortable” working in a public job amid the pandemic.
That led her to take a job at a beekeeper in Clarence, she said.
Reader said the mouth of the Clarence River was a dangerous place in the event of a flood.
