Emotional appeal over missing teen

Updated 14.39 Mon Sep 10 2007

Keywords: Hampshire, teenager, missing, Rosemary Edwards

The father of a horse-mad 15-year-old girl has made an emotional appeal for information about his missing daughter.

Rosemary Edwards had a minor argument with her mother and father on Tuesday night and left her home in Dibden Purlieu, Hampshire, without taking her mobile phone or any money.

Police have had two sightings of the teenager who has waist-length blonde hair

Police have had two sightings of the teenager, who has waist-length blonde hair - one when she was seen walking on a road near her home in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Her disappearance followed a row resulting from Rosemary losing her part-time job. Because she lied to her parents, they warned she would not be able to spend as much time as before riding horses.

Her father, Robert, 52, wife, Jennifer, 47, son, Robert, 17, and daughter, Lucy, 19, attended a press conference at the New Forest Lodge Hotel in Pikes Hill, Lyndhurst.

Mr Edwards: "We all love you and miss you terribly. We are a family of five and the four of us here need you back with us. Our hearts are breaking. Please come home."

Officers have searched the neighbourhood and parts of the nearby New Forest and are contacting other young people who Rosemary may have been in contact with over the past weeks and months.

Superintendent Barry Talbot said two people had come forward to tell officers they saw a girl matching 5ft 9in Rosemary's description on a road near her home just after midnight on Wednesday.

He said 30 officers are working on the investigation and detectives are keeping an "open mind" about what had happened to the teenager, who is described as academically gifted.

"Clearly both the family and police have become more concerned because we have not found Rosemary yet," he said at the press conference. "That concern increases while we are unable to find her."

He appealed to the public who were in the Hythe and Dibden Purlieu areas in the early hours of Wednesday, and who saw Rosemary, who has dark blonde hair below her waist and looks older than her years, to come forward.