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SEARCH FOR SHANNON: JCB brought in to search wasteland
Police searchers have drafted in a JCB digger to help with the search for nine-year-old Shannon Matthews.
A five-strong team yesterday tackled the painstaking task of combing a large area of wasteland, opposite Crow's Nest Park in Dewsbury.
The land was covered with thick undergrowth, uprooted trees, rubble and fly-tipped waste.
The JCB grabbed huge bundles of the scrub and green waste, then dropped it to the ground where the officers picked through it with gardening forks.
Shannon was last seen 16 days ago at 3.10pm on Tuesday February 19 as she left her school, apparently heading home.
Snatched
It is feared she has been snatched.
Elsewhere, and closer to the Dewsbury Moor estate where Shannon lives, officers were still carrying out house-to-house searches.
Addresses in the nine-year-old's street, Moorside Road, were again being checked, some of them with the specialist dogs provided by Greater Manchester Police.
Amanda Hyett, aunt of Shannon's sister, Courtney, said: "It seems like the police are like us, they are just hoping to find something.
"A shoe, her towel, anything that said she was in that area. The sooner there is that breakthrough the sooner we will see her back."
Inside Shannon's home, mum Karen Matthews and partner Craig Meehan were also hoping for that breakthrough.
Ms Matthews said she hoped the release of the anguished 999 call she made the night her daughter disappeared would jog some memories.
"It is hard to hear it again. But anything that makes people think, anything that helps get Shannon home, is worth it," she said.
A news item, playing the emergency call, flashed onto the television while the YEP was inside Shannon's home yesterday.
As Ms Matthews's pained voice came out from the set, she grabbed Mr Meehan's hand tight.
Tears
The tears at the edges of her eyes started to leak out when Courtney, two, pointed to the television screen image of Ms Matthews and said "mummy".
A rare lighter moment came when a live news link-up came from outside the family home, and a friend waved his hand to the camera underneath the net curtains.
After a brief delay, the hand appeared on the screen in front of the room.
Even Ms Matthews managed a brief smile at that one.
"I haven't smiled much these last couple of weeks," she said. "We hope we'll be smiling a lot more soon."
richard.edwards@ytpn.co.uk
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Weather for Leeds
Saturday 11 February 2012
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