Toronto police are offering a $50,000 reward for information that might lead to the safe return of missing schoolgirl Cecilia Zhang following a fruitless weeklong search for the youngster.
“I hope that we can make significant progress and lessen the trauma that continues, of course, not only for the Zhang family but for the community as a whole,” Chief Julian Fantino told a news conference today.
“We have no reason to believe that she isn’t alive.”
Fantino had words of advice to whomever is responsible for the nine-year-old’s abduction from her home last week: “The honourable, right thing to do, despite what may have happened to this point in time, is to return Cecilia back to her parents. It’s the humane thing to do. My best advice to you is: call it quits.”
Fantino, who was out of town for the past week at a conference in the United States, addressed the media just hours after visiting the home of Cecilia’s parents, Raymond Zhang and Sherry Xu, in the city’s northeast end.
His appeal to the girl’s abductor came as investigators shifted their search away from the girl’s neighbourhood, focusing instead on an industrial area near Pearson International Airport.
While police canvassed workers and patrons of a Tim Hortons doughnut shop in Brampton, not far from the airport, employees handed out thousands of flyers emblazoned with a colour photograph of Cecilia.
Police have confirmed two calls to Cecilia’s home last Monday morning were made from pay phones in the area. One call was made from a phone booth in the parking lot of the doughnut shop. Police have not been specific about the other call.
Both calls were made before Cecilia, a gifted student and the only child of Zhang and Xu, was reported missing at 8:27 a.m. on Oct. 20.
Tim Hortons manager Brad Stafford said co-operation from the public had been “excellent” at the busy drive-through restaurant.
“I have a four-year-old niece at home and if anything, God forbid, should happen to her, I would want the same thing to be done,” Stafford said.
Sgt. Jim Muscat didn’t say why it took police a full week to go public about the phone calls. Rumours of the calls circulated almost immediately after the Grade 4 student’s disappearance, but Muscat said repeatedly last week that he wasn’t aware of any possible contact between the girl’s abductor and her family.
At least one of the phone booths had been reportedly cordoned off with police tape and dusted for fingerprints last week.
Muscat refused to give any details about the calls, including whether the parents spoke to anybody. He would only say police were hoping to jog the memories of people “about anything they may have seen that might have to do with that phone call” to Cecilia’s parents.
“So far we’ve spoken to hundreds and hundreds of customers,” he added. “Mostly, the people we’ve spoken to are very concerned with Cecilia’s well-being. But you never know, any little piece of information could point us to the right direction.”
Police say the abduction was not a random act, and are exploring the possibility Cecilia was kidnapped for profit.
Police have shown little progress in finding the missing girl despite more than 700 tips to a hotline established after Cecilia’s abduction.
The girl’s parents have also set up a website in English and Chinese dedicated to attracting anyone who knows anything about Cecilia’s whereabouts.
“There has been no progress since the disappearance of Cecilia,” says the website (www.ceciliazhang.org), which guarantees any information provided “will be absolutely non-traceable” and will be sent directly to Cecilia’s parents.
The site also includes a letter from Xu, published today in three Toronto-area Chinese-language newspapers, begging the abductor to “put Cecilia in a safe place and let her come home herself.”
The latest pleas from Cecilia’s parents come after their first public appearance Friday at a news conference, where Xu sobbed as she told the girl how much she loved her while assuring the youngster that her parents “never hurt anybody.”
（NANCY CARR）
