Police issued a murder and kidnapping warrant yesterday for the father of a three-year-old girl found abandoned in Australia, after identifying the body of her mother found stuffed in the trunk of a car in New Zealand.
The warrant for the arrest of Xue Naiyin, a Chinese-language magazine publisher in New Zealand's largest city of Auckland, was sent to Interpol in the US, where Xue fled several days ago, police spokeswoman Noreen Hegarty said.
A three-nation investigation was launched after Xue was captured on security camera footage leaving his daughter, Qian Xun Xue, alone at a train station in Melbourne, Australia, on Saturday. He boarded a flight to Los Angeles shortly afterward.
The footage of the toddler, looking scared and confused, topped television news bulletins and was front page news in both New Zealand and Australia.
Police in New Zealand, where the family had lived since 2002, began searching for the girl's mother after suspecting foul play when she failed to come forward to authorities about her daughter.
`pumpkin'
Qian, nicknamed "pumpkin" before she was identified by the Australian officials who found her, was put into temporary foster care in Melbourne, where carers reported she had trouble sleeping and repeatedly asked for her mother.
Police investigators found a troubled family history in New Zealand.
Xue, a well-known figure in New Zealand's ethnic Chinese community, had a history of being violent and was ordered late last year by a court to stay away from his wife and daughter. Creditors said his company, Chinese Times One, owed them significant sums.
After starting searches on Monday, police on Wednesday discovered a woman's body in the trunk of Xue's car parked outside the family home in Auckland.
Preliminary findings of a post-mortem examination determined that the body was of Anan Liu, 27, Xue's wife and the mother of the child, and that she had died "during a violent episode," police said in a statement.
US authorities said they were looking for Xue, who arrived in Los Angeles on Saturday.
leads
"We have a lot of information and right now it's just leads," Tom Hession of the US Marshal Service told New Zealand's National Radio. "We don't have anything definitive, he could be anywhere."
Jason Lee, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department, told National Radio Xue had been placed in a nationwide "wanted" computer system, but cautioned it could take months to find him.
"He could be anywhere, he could possibly be in another country," he told National Radio.
New Zealand Immigration Minister Clayton Cosgrove said yesterday officials had fast-tracked procedures to allow Qian's grandmother, Liu Xiaoping, to come to the country from Hunan in China.
Liu Xiaoping has said she intends to travel to New Zealand, then Australia to try to take custody of Qian.
"What she is going through now has no doubt left scars on her heart," Liu Xiaoping told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.
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