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MISSING

Family launch fresh appeal and £100K reward for Lisa Brown missing from Costa del Sol since 2015

The family of Lisa Brown were in Cadiz on Friday to launch a fresh appeal for information on her disappearance and announce a reward of €100,000.

Family launch fresh appeal and £100K reward for Lisa Brown missing from Costa del Sol since 2015
Lisa Brown has been missing since November, 2015. Photo; AFP

Brown, originally from Alexandria in Dunbartonshire, Scotland,was 31-years-old when she vanished from her home in Guadiaro, Cadiz province, on November 4th, 2015 after failing to collect to her young son from school.

Her family believe that someone in the English-speaking community in southern Spain could hold key information about her disappearance and hope the reward will encourage someone to break “the wall of silence”.

“We are sure that people know what happened and ask them to think of a little boy who asks every night when his Mummy is coming home. We also hope that the reward might persuade people to tell us what happened,” her brother Craig Douglas said in a press conference in the locality of Los Barrios, in the province of Cadiz, on Friday.

The appeal is supported by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Spanish authorities and is backed up by a reward of up to £100,000 from the family, which is supported by UK charity Crimestoppers.

Roger Critchell, Crimestoppers Director of Operations, said: “The family are desperate to find out what happened to Lisa.

“We understand that people are not always willing to go to the police so we would urge them to contact Crimestoppers with 100 percent anonymity through our phone line and our online form.”

“Citizen collaboration is essential in these kind of cases,” said British ambassador Simon Manley at the appeal launch.

Police have issued a European Arrest Warrant for Simon Corner, a yacht dealer from Liverpool who was in a relationship with Brown at the time of her disappearance.

Corner was originally interviewed by Guardia Civil detectives at the time of Lisa’s disappearance before fleeing the country. Detectives believed that a ‘violent episode’ had occurred at Brown’s home before she went missing.

He was later arrested via a European Arrest Warrant in Denmark and extradited back to Spain in 2016 but was then released on bail.

However, he broke his bail conditions and failed to sign in to his local police station last month and his whereabouts is now unknown.

Anyone with information can contact Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 (UK) and 900 555 111 (in Spain) or via the online form here.

The reward will be paid out to any providing substantial information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible or results in identifying the whereabouts of the body. The reward will be valid for six months dating from March 23rd.

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.

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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