Police looking for Missing Alice Gross identify 'area of interest' in west London park
Detectives investigating the disappearance of missing teenager Alice Gross have identified an 'area of interest' in a west London park, Scotland Yard said.
The 14-year-old was captured on CCTV on August 28 walking alongside the Grand Union Canal in west London back towards her home in Hanwell and has not been seen since.
Investigators today staged a reconstruction of the moments the teenager was last seen, on a towpath in west London four weeks ago.
A Metropolitan Police spokesman confirmed that a section of Elthorne Park near the towpath was being assessed as part of the inquiry.
He said: "As part of the ongoing search operation we have identified an area that is currently being assessed. It will be subject to further examination to determine if it is relevant to this investigation.
"The area of interest is in Elthorne Park."
Police carried out an inch by inch search of the park and set up an inner and outer cordon to preserve the scene “in accordance with normal practice.”
Murder detectives investigating the disappearance have received more the 1,000 calls from the public in response to appeals but have not yet been able to establish what happened after 4.26pm that day.
Prime suspect Arnis Zalkalns was seen on CCTV cycling past the same spot just 15 minutes later, although the convicted killer went missing on September 3 and officers have been dispatched to his native Latvia in a bid to trace him.
Zalkalns, 41, who works at a building site in Isleworth, west London, is thought to have come to the UK in 2007, but authorities here apparently had no record of his murder conviction.
The general labourer is white, 5ft 10ins and stocky, with dark brown hair that he normally wears tied in a pony tail.
