STILL NO SIGN OF WOMAN MISSING FOR SIX DAYS
Alexia Saoulli
Cyprus Mail
May 12 2009
Cyprus
Daughters’ desperate search for 86-year-old mother
THE DAUGHTERS of an 86-year-old woman missing since last Wednesday
said yesterday they beside themselves with worry and appealed for
any information regarding their mother’s whereabouts.
Lydia Gulesserian disappeared from the Kaladjian old people’s home in
Strovolos at 9am last Wednesday. Her two daughters, who have spent
every waking hour scouring the streets for their beloved mother,
are at their wits’ end over where she could be.
"We don’t know if she’s in somebody’s house. We’ve gone over every
scenario. Maybe someday knocked her down and was too afraid to come
forward and hid somewhere. You think of everything," said her daughter,
Arta Gulesserian.
She and her sister Lenia both live in the United States and had
only just flown to Cyprus to settle their mother in at the care home
before returning.
According to Arta, her mother liked her new abode and it was unlikely
she’d been trying to "run away".
"She didn’t take any of her things with her… She liked the
place. There was no problem with that. She becomes disorientated once
in a while. I don’t know if that’s happened while she was out walking,"
she said.
What about trying to return home? Again that was unlikely, as she
was a stranger to Nicosia and none of her old neighbours in Larnaca
had heard from her.
"She doesn’t know Nicosia… We tried Larnaca and have spoken to
everybody. She hasn’t been seen there either," she said.
Arta said her mother, who speaks Armenian, Greek, Turkish and English,
had been missing from the home for three hours before anybody had
noticed she was gone.
"She doesn’t walk very fast so if she’d only been missing an hour
we might have caught up to her. After three hours though, who knows
where she is?"
She said she and her sister had talked to everybody in the area,
including all the Sri Lankan housemaids who had promised to keep an
eye out for the missing pensioner.
"We don’t know what else to do. I don’t know how an 86-year-old woman
can survive six days and nights," said Arta.
"We are supposed to be leaving in two weeks. We have to go back to
work. I don’t know what we are going to do if we don’t find her. We
have no answers. Every day we’ve been there scouring the streets.
"I don’t know what else to do. It is very, very upsetting just going
up and down the street. We are in the area from 7am and sometimes
stay till 10pm just trying to think where she could be," she said.
Nicosia CID yesterday confirmed they were looking into the case. The
question of why no sniffer dogs had been used in the search was
not clear. Although there have been a few reported sightings of the
86-year-old, none have amounted to anything.
The two daughters have put up posters on lampposts and kiosks
throughout the area in the hope that they will help lead to the
discovery of their mother’s whereabouts.
Anyone with any information should please contact the nearest police
station or call Arta on 99-047800