A 24-year-old student nurse who had disappeared nearly 50 days ago has been found alive and well in Hampshire. Owami Davies, from Grays, Essex, left her family home on July 4, a Monday morning, telling her mother Nicole that she was going to the gym. When she failed to return, her distraught family reported her missing to the police two days later.
The discovery came as a result of a call to police at 10.30am on Tuesday from a member of the public who had seen media appeals.
Detective Chief Inspector Nigel Penney, from Specialist Crime Command, Britain's equivalent of the FBI, said: 'This is the outcome we were all hoping and praying for. My team have been working around to clock to find Owami and we are immensely relieved she has been found.
'I would like to sincerely thank the media and public for sharing appeals to find Owami.
'Your help in cases like this is crucial and we are very grateful. I’d like to also thank colleagues at Essex Police for their invaluable assistance during this investigation.'
What do we know about the disappearance of Owami Davies?
The ordeal took several unpleasant twists. In early August, police released CCTV showing Owami in the company of a man on the night she had been last seen alive, 7 July. Footage showed Owami crossing Derby Road in West Croydon just after midnight.
Three police forces, including the Met, which has been dogged by a collapse in public confidence and criticism with its services to women and minorities, poured ‘huge resources’ into pursuing 117 leads, recovering 50,000 hours of CCTV footage and arresting five men, who have all been bailed, in a 'race against time'.
It then emerged that Owami had initially been found by officers sleeping in the doorway of a friend’s house in south London on the day that she was reported missing. But they did not flag the case because she had not been logged as a missing person on national police systems. Owami, who goes by a number of names, refused the officers' help and walked away.
Described by police as ‘vulnerable’ and having required medical intervention on more than one occasion owing to bouts of depression, the promising young medical student had been in the last term of the final year of degree before she disappeared. Nicknamed 'Princess' because of her love of Disney, she had planned to visit Disneyland Paris and Spain this summer.
'I would now politely request that the privacy of Owami and her family are respected at this time,' said Detective Penney.
Why was the police investigation criticised?
Questions were asked about why the case was not passed to the Specialist Crime Command until 1 August. Penney acknowledged that when his team took over 'we were playing catch-up to see what had and hadn’t been done'. The search has not been helped by the fact that the Met issued what it wrongly said was a picture of Davies as part of an appeal on 3 August. The correct photos were issued afterwards.
Nadine White, The Independent's Race Correspondent, said in a column for the newspaper that '[for] the avoidance of doubt, a pervasive disregard for Black lives is the underlying reason for these dangerously inadequate responses to Black people going missing.' Comparing the media and police's response to the wall-to-wall media coverage of investigations into the disappearances of Sarah Everard and Libby Squires, she made the point that '[mass] media pays more attention when white people, specifically women, go missing, than when Black women do'.
The Met firmly rejected criticism, labelling any suggestion that the investigation was not being taken seriously as ‘not only disappointing, it is simply not supported by the facts.’
Met Commander Paul Brogden said: 'We know there have been concerns raised around the search for Owami.
'We, alongside our colleagues in Essex Police, will be carrying out a review of all our actions from when Owami was first reported missing to ensure we have acted correctly and to identify any ways to improve our response to finding other missing people.'