When Ngari Ngavavia’s partner woke her up early one Sunday morning, the words he said instantly plunged the mum-of-two into every parent’s worst nightmare. “Babe, I can’t find Shay Shay,” Grayson Samuel (19) told her, unable to hide the panic in his voice as he broke the horrific news that their precious two-year-old daughter had gone missing from the house during the night.
“I went into shock,” says Ngari. “It was like someone had ripped out my heart. I went crazy. All the bad things that could possibly happen to a little child started going through my mind.” The terrifying situation unfolded last month when Ngari (20) went to a friend’s house for the evening. Later, she returned to her parents’ West Auckland home, where she and Grayson were staying, and assumed Shay Shay had jumped into bed with her grandparents.
But as Ngari tip-toed to bed, trying not to wake anyone, she had no idea her child was gone. Shay Shay wasn’t with her grandparents – she wasn’t even in the house. The little girl had woken up in the middle of the night, managed to unlock the front door and wandered into the street without anyone knowing.Wearing nothing but a pink t-shirt, the toddler walked 100m up a steep hill, past a large construction site and down a busy main road. Nobody is sure how long Shay Shay was out there by herself, alone and vulnerable.
Thankfully, just after midnight, a police officer was driving past and spotted the half-dressed and barefoot child, distressed and crying. He picked her up and took her to the police station, where the officers faced another issue – who did she belong to and why was she out alone at night?
Nobody had reported a missing child and all the police could do was hope someone would call. Meanwhile, back at her home, Shay Shay’s family members were still fast asleep, unaware that she was gone. “We didn’t realise that Shay Shay was missing until the morning, when everyone got out of bed and discovered she wasn’t there,” says Ngari. The family frantically went door-to-door in their street, searching for Shay Shay, and had scoured the nearby construction site hoping to find her.
“I was in a really bad state,” says Ngari, still upset at the memory of that horrible morning. “I ran into the middle of the road screaming and thinking the worst. I thought maybe a stranger had her and that we were never going to get her back.”
Ngari couldn’t stop thinking about little Aisling Symes, a toddler who went missing seven months ago, in the same area of Auckland. Aisling’s body was eventually found in a flooded stormwater pipe.
“I couldn’t stop thinking that maybe the same thing had happened to my Shay Shay,” says Ngari. “I now know what Aisling’s poor parents felt when she was missing – it really is an awful feeling.” But this ordeal ended happily.
As soon as the family realised Shay Shay wasn’t in the street, they called the police to report her missing. The news that she had been found safe and sound by the police was the happy ending her parents had hoped for. It was a huge relief for Ngari, who blames herself for the incident. “I’m angry with myself. I should have known where she was at all times. I never thought anything like this could happen to my family,” says Ngari while watching over Shay Shay and her baby brother Larmon (1).
once Ngari was reunited with her little daughter, she hugged her for a long time and asked her an important question. “I wanted to know why she went outside and she told me, ‘I look for oummy,'” says Ngari, who still has no idea how Shay Shay managed to unlock the door.Ngari knows it could have ended in tragedy for the family and hopes their ordeal makes other families aware that young children can get out of their properties without anyone knowing. “This has made us realise what children are capable of,” she says.
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