Police determined to find missing girls
Police working in the nerve centre of the hunt for missing schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman today told of their determination to do anything possible to find them.
Officers at the incident room in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, said they were working round the clock to sift through the flood of information given to police hunting for the vital breakthrough which could still bring the girls home.
They were working relentlessly despite growing fears that the two best friends may have been abducted, and their desperate hope was that their work could still lead to them being found safe.
Det Sgt David Grierson said: “There’s two missing children, we will do everything we can to find them irrespective of what statistics might tell us.
“There’s a real sense of urgency, to simply process everything as quickly as we possibly can.”
Officers have been working for up to 15 hours at a time, regularly only returning home at 10.00 or 11.00pm.
The men and women in the incident room were surrounded by computer screens, checking and cross-checking all the possible sightings of the girls and scraps of information gathered since the inquiry began.
They used the HOLMES - Home Office Large Major Enquiries System - computer process to prioritise the information which needs to be followed up by the team.
They sat in virtual silence under bright fluorescent lighting, frantically tapping at keyboards as they hoped to spot a vital piece of information.
Pc Gary Collins, who works in the incident room, said the strain and pressure of the work affected his colleagues differently.
“Some people handle it better than others, but it affects us all,” he said.
“It’s very stressful because of the type of the inquiry, it doesn’t get any bigger than this.
“The first thing you do in the morning is check for any updates, hoping they have been found, and the last thing before you go to bed.
“We are all just hoping they can still be found.”
