Search icon

News

11th Jun 2021

Body of 6-year-old girl kidnapped by father found in sports bag in sea

Laura Grainger

The girl has been missing since disappearing with her father and sister in April

The body of one of two missing sisters has been found in a sports bag on the bed of the sea.

Spanish authorities confirmed that 6-year-old Olivia Gimeno, who has been missing along with 1-year-old sister Anna since April, was found by search teams yesterday off the coast of Tenerife.


The girl’s body was located in a sports bag weighed down to the sea bed by the anchor of her father’s boat. Next to it was another empty sports bag.

The search for baby Anna and the girls’ father, 37-year-old Tomás Gimeno, is still ongoing.

Gimeno is believed to have taken his two daughters aboard his boat, which had been found drifting a day after all three disappeared. Traces of his blood had been found onboard and a child’s car seat belonging to Anna was found floating in the sea.

On the night they went missing, the girls had been visiting their father. Gimeno reportedly told ex-partner Beatriz Zimmerman, the girls’ mother, that she would never see her daughters again in a phone conversation that evening.

“I almost can’t find the words anymore. I want to disappear too, I’ve no more strength, this is torture,” Zimmerman wrote in an open letter last month. “What hurts the most is thinking that I can’t know how they are doing, not being able to talk [to them], not knowing when I’m going to see them again.”

A number of officials have paid tribute the family, including Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez.

“I cannot begin to imagine the pain of the mother of little Anna and Olivia, who disappeared in Tenerife, following the terrible news we have just heard,” he wrote on Twitter.

“I send a hug and my love and that of my whole family, who today show solidarity with Beatriz and her loved ones.”

Topics:

news,sensitive