NSW: Police renew appeal for information

AAP General News (Australia)
12-06-2000
NSW: Police renew appeal for information

SYDNEY, Dec 6 AAP - Police today renewed their appeal for information as inquiries
continued into the death of a two-year-old boy in the back of his mother's stolen car.

Police were still hoping witnesses who were at Hill Street, in the western Sydney suburb
of Cabramatta, when thieves made off with the BMW containing Leo Nguyen, would come forward.

Leo suffered a cardiac arrest as the temperature soared in the closed car after the
thieves dumped the vehicle, leaving the little boy strapped in the back.

The boy's mother, Lan Nguyen, told today's Daily Telegraph of her agonising wait as
police searched for the car.

"I think it would have taken me less than three hours to find him," she told the paper.

"Why wouldn't they let me look?

"When I was at the police station I asked them to take me around to look for my son.

"I didn't want to sit there and wait."

Police yesterday defended their two-and-a-half-hour search for the toddler, denying
a lack of helicopters hampered the search.

Investigators also sifted through closed circuit television footage in a bid to track
down the thieves.

The car was stolen from busy Hill Street in Cabramatta about 1.30pm (AEDT) after Leo's
mother went to a supermarket 50 metres away and left the car running to keep the air conditioning
on.

Police located the car on Grace Avenue, a residential street five blocks from where
the car was stolen.

Greater Hume Regional Commander Chris Evans conceded no police helicopters were available
in the Sydney area for the search because two were already on jobs while the other was
out of action because the pilot was off duty.

But he denied that the helicopter would have cut the search short.

Commander Evans also defended the grid search of Cabramatta, involving seven cars and
30 officers, who first examined "hotspots" or known dumping grounds for stolen vehicles.

Local traders and shoppers have been interviewed by police but so far no witnesses
to the to the theft had come forward.

AAP jjs/mjm

KEYWORD: BOY DAYLEAD

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