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MISSING

Three-year-old girl found dead on train tracks after parents lose sight of her during dinner

Lucía Vivar Hidalgo went missing on Wednesday evening while playing on a terraza where her parents were having dinner.

Published: 27 July 2017 09:41 CEST
Three-year-old girl found dead on train tracks after parents lose sight of her during dinner
The missing poster issued during the search on Wednesday.

The couple were dining on a terraza in the centre of Pizarra when they lost sight of the daughter, who was playing nearby.

A team of more than 600 people frantically searched for the child after parents raised the alarm at 11.20pm on Wednesday night.

Authorities, including police, firefighters and civil protection units and dozens of volunteers, searched into the night in the town northwest of Malaga where the family were resident.

 

Felix Lozano, the mayor of Pizarra, said the parents raised the alarm after “they lost sight of the daughter for two minutes”.

The little girl’s body was eventually discovered at 7am this morning lying lifeless alongside a railway track some seven kilometres from the restaurant.

A train driver spotted what he thought could be a body and stopped the train to alert authorities, according to a report in the local Diario Sur. 

The Civil Guard have opened an investigation into the circumstances of her death.

SKIING

Spain mourns Blanca Fernández Ochoa, the Olympian skier found dead in Madrid’s sierra

The body of former Spanish alpine skimedallist Blanca Fernández Ochoa was found Wednesday in a mountainous area near Madrid after days of searches for her by hundreds of police and volunteers, officials said.

Published: 5 September 2019 09:34 CEST
Spain mourns Blanca Fernández Ochoa, the Olympian skier found dead in Madrid's sierra
Archive photo of Blanca Fernández Ochoa during her Olympic career.

The 56-year-old — won a bronze skiing for Spain in the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville, becoming the country's first female Winter Olympic medallist — had been missing since she was last spotted on surveillance video at a shopping centre on August 24th.

Her car was later found at a parking lot near the start of a hiking trail in Cercedilla, a mountainous village near Madrid. The authorities said they are still investigating the cause of her death.

“Solidarity, support and human warmth have been felt these days in the mountains of Cercedilla. Security forces and many volunteers have taken part in the search for Blanca Fernández Ochoa. But nothing could be done. My affection to all her family,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez tweeted.

Hundreds of police, firefighters, forest rangers and volunteers, backed by helicopters, drones and tracking dogs, had taken part in the search for Fernández Ochoa.

Her family only alerted the authorities about her disappearance on August 29th because they said it was not unusual for her to go on hikes in the area, even without her phone, according to Spanish media reports.

Police on Saturday issued an appeal on social media for help from the public in locating Fernández Ochoa along with a picture of her, which drew media attention to her disappearance.

She was well known in Spain, where she had taken part in several TV reality shows after retiring from sports.

Her older brother, Francisco Fernández Ochoa, won a gold medal for skiing in the 1972 Winter Olympics in Japan. He is the first and only Spaniard to have won a gold medal at the Winter Olympics.   

There is a statue in his honour in Cercedilla.   

Until 2018 the brother and sister were the only Spaniards to have won medals at a Winter Olympics.

“It is a very sad day for Spanish sports,” Spain's secretary of state for sports, Maria Jose Rienda, said in a statement.

READ ALSO: Snowboarder from Ceuta wins Olympic medal for Spain

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