'You have to face facts': Missing Christchurch woman's family baffled by her disappearance

Wednesday, 14 July 2021

The disappearance of Christchurch woman Shirley Warrington, 85, has baffled her family and searchers.

For Karen Colville, the nights are the worst.

In her quiet moments, she visualises her missing mother, 85-year-old Shirley Warrington, alone and cold.

“At night it hits you more. It’s those quiet moments. Then at 6am, I feel I’ve got to get busy, try to keep it together.

“You don’t think this is going to happen to you. She should be at home safe and warm.”

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Missing woman Shirley Warrington, pictured with her daughter Karen Colville, on her 85th birthday on June 12.

Warrington, who gets confused but has not been diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer's, is believed to have gone missing in the Ferrymead area on Saturday night.

Police suspended their extensive search late on Tuesday night and dropped flyers around the Ferrymead area on Wednesday.

Colville and her daughter Aleisha have been out every day joining a host of volunteers looking for the pensioner. Colville said it was astonishing that someone could just disappear.

Warrington with her great-granddaughter Harper Hofman, 16 months.

“I’m visualising her wandering around a paddock. She might have moved ahead of the searchers. It’s so sad.”

After three days of hoping, reality is starting to bite.

“The nights are so cold … I want so much for her to be alive but you to have to face facts.”

Colville says the family has to face facts over her mother’s disappearance.

Warrington lived with her husband of 10 years, Wally Warrington, a retired butcher, in Burwood. Colville said they doted on each other with Wally treating her mother “like a princess”. He did the cooking and tried to make her life easy.

Police and Land Search and Rescue members search Christchurch's Heathcote Valley for Shirley Warrington, 85, on Tuesday.

Police have had difficulty piecing together exactly what happened on Saturday night, partly due to Wally’s traumatised state and his faulty recall.

They have driven around the area with him, and he has remembered sounds, fences and old buildings that suggest the Ferrymead/Ferry Rd area. The couple do not appear to have gone to Sumner, and they definitely did not drive to Lyttelton.

It’s known the couple had left home by 6pm on Saturday. It appears they decided to drive to Burnham because Warrington was convinced someone was waiting for them there. Her brothers were in the army and her family lived in Weedons alongside the railway line.

By 7pm on Saturday, police had been alerted by family and found the couple in Rolleston where an officer spoke to them. They told the constable they had found the person they had gone to see. The officer gave them directions back to Christchurch and followed them for a short time.

The couple then appeared to have got lost, ending up on Ferry Rd and then turning right at the Dyers Rd roundabout towards the Lyttelton tunnel about 8.30pm.

It seems Warrington got out of the car in Ferrymead to seek help with directions. Neither she nor Wally had cellphones and the car’s GPS system was switched off. Warrington did not return and Wally apparently fell asleep and then began driving around looking for her.

The next confirmed sighting of the car was at 10.19pm at the junction of Bridle Path and Ferry roads, then 10 minutes later in Moorhouse Ave. Warrington was not in the car and Wally was seen on Pages Rd about 8.30am, after which he drove home.

Detective Senior Sergeant Damon Wells said about 40 staff, several dogs and drones had been involved in the search.

“There was nowhere else we could reasonably search. Anywhere else would just be a guess,” he said.

Warrington was stubborn and resourceful, and it would be wrong to think she could not have gone far.

“A few weeks ago an 80-year-old in Springfield decided to go for a walk at midnight and was found at 7am in Oxford 30 kilometres [away],” he said.

The cold nights were a major concern, but it was still “entirely possible” the missing woman would turn up alive. He encouraged the public to keep an eye out, especially over the weekend when people would be out and about.

Warrington turned 85 on June 12. After school, she trained as a seamstress and then married. She had four children. Colville remembered her mother staying up all night to finish her wedding dress and her bridesmaids’ dresses.

Her mother was stubbornly independent, and when they tried to get her to see a doctor, she was resistant, she said. Although she had slowed down in recent years, she had always been very active, keen on gardening and interested in her grandchildren.

“Physically she doesn’t do much these days. They [her mother and Wally] sit on their two-seater holding hands and doing crossword puzzles.”