‘Lived in her own little world’: Airlie Montgomery’s devastated dad speaks after her tragic death

The schoolgirl who died in a tragic accident near her North Nowra home on Sunday had “no sense of fear” because of a medical condition, her dad says.

The devastated father of six-year-old Airlie Montgomery, who died when she wandered away from her family home on the NSW south coast on Sunday, has spoken about how a medical condition meant she had no sense of danger and “lived in her own little world”.

Police are treating Airlie’s death as a tragic incident after she fell from a rock ledge in bushland near her home in North Nowra hours after she went missing. Her grieving father Corey Montgomery toldThe Daily Telegraph on Thursday that Airlie, who was diagnosed with severe autism, may have thought she was going on a little adventure.

Six-year-old Airlie Montgomery went missing from her North Nowra in southern NSW on Sunday. Picture: NSW Police/Supplied.

“She had no sense of danger, no sense of what the world was all about,” he said, “She lived in her own little world.”

“She couldn’t speak in sentences, you’d ask her ‘Hey Airlie, how was your day at school?’, and she’d say ‘Octopus’.”

Mr Montgomery was working at a mine site six hours from home when he learned that Airlie had gone missing and said he was shocked as she had never left their home alone before. “It’s not like we’d ever had near misses with her, this was the first time anything like this had happened,” he said.

A section of The Grotto Reserve bushwalking area in North Nowra where police discovered the body of schoolgirl. Picture: Richard Dobson

“She would play in the yard all the time. She’d sit in the leaves and throw them, or play with rocks… that was her happy place. She wasn’t a wanderer, she had never wandered off.”

Airlie’s body was found near a grotto at 6pm on Sunday, about four hours after her family noticed she was missing.

Police immediately embarked on a wide-scale search for the child and Mr Montgomery says about 1000 members of the local community also joined in the search, something he is very grateful for.

There’s been an outpouring of support for the little girl’s family.

“The whole community is feeling so hard for that mother and family,” one person wrote on Facebook. Another local said they are, “traumatised that this could happen in our quiet neighbourhood”.

Originally published as ‘Lived in her own little world’: Airlie Montgomery’s devastated dad speaks after her tragic death