Tahnee Shanks: Missing Whitsunday woman’s daughter leaves Mexico
A toddler abandoned at a church in a dangerous part of Mexico has boarded a plane with her uncle and grandmother as the Queensland family expressed their anguish at leaving without the two-year-old’s mother, who remains missing.
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A toddler abandoned at a church in a dangerous part of Cancun, Mexico, has boarded a plane with her uncle and grandmother as the Queensland family expressed their anguish at leaving without the two-year-old’s mother, who remains missing.
Adelynn’s mother Tahnee Shanks and Ms Shanks’ former partner, Adelynn’s father Jorge Aguirre Astudillo, remain missing more than a week after Adelynn appeared outside the Chapel of the San Archangel on the evening of May 3.
Mackay man Ben Shanks and his mother Leanne said Adelynn was doing well but said it was heartbreaking to leave while the search for Tahnee was ongoing.
“We just want to get her home,” grandmother Leanne Shanks told Channel 9 at a Cancun airport.
“It’s breaking my heart to go without Tahnee, but there’s nothing I can do about that.”
Adelynn will fly home with her grandmother and uncle, while police continue their search for her mother.
“We’re leaving knowing that Tahnee is being searched for in a very professional way, they’re doing an excellent job,” Ben Shanks, Adelynn’s uncle and Tahnee’s brother, said.
The family say police have kept them well informed about the investigation into Tahnee.
“They have been incredible.”
Adelynn’s grandmother said despite the events of the past week, she had been her usual, happy self.
“She’s been great, she’s really taken to Ben,” Leanne said.
“She’s gonna be well looked after,” Ben said.
Mexican police have revealed the frantic moments before Tahnee disappeared in Cancun more than a week ago.
The 32-year-old and her former partner Jorge had booked a hotel in the tourist hotspot but then began to travel back to Merida, about two hours away, where they had been living.
Then mysteriously, they returned to Cancun where their daughter was found abandoned outside a church last Monday.
Police are now doing tests on a burnt out car found in Puerto Morelos, 40 minutes south of Cancun on the same day.
Serial numbers confirmed that the damaged car was the same as the pair were driving.
The details emerged as Mexican authorities said Mr Estudillo had been deported from the United States for attacking a police officer there.
He has also been subject to domestic violence complaints against another woman, authorities said.
Óscar Montes de Oca Rosales, general attorney of Quintana Roo, the state that includes Cancun, said police were keeping an open mind on the case.
“We are analysing videos and the chronology of events. They were visiting Cancun for one day, made an hotel reservation, then they went back to Merida, but on the road decided to comeback to Cancun, and that is when the girl’s event takes place,” he said, according to a translation from Spanish.
“The husband would be a line of investigation, since he has a history of family abuse with respect to another couple. We are looking for both.”
Mr de Oca Rosales said the investigation was still active, and they were hoping Ms Shanks would be found alive.
Ben and his mother Leanne were reunited with Adelynn on Saturday Australian time.
The Australian embassy ensured the little girl had an emergency passport ready to return her to Australia and the trio has been in Cancun waiting for the tick of approval to get her back.
“We ask for privacy while we focus on caring for Adelynn,” the family said.
“Our immediate goal is to get Addy, her uncle and grandmother home safely as soon as possible.
“With several hurdles and red tape, this may take some time.
“We remain deeply concerned for the safety and whereabouts of Adelynn’s mother Tahnee.
“We would like to thank the kind and generous people from all over the world who have reached out to us and offered their support and assistance.”
Ella Stower, who says she grew up with Tahnee in Conway Beach, set up a GoFundMe page to raise $20,000 and almost the entire amount was raised within two days.
Since then, the family remains unsure how long they will need to stay in Mexico navigating the process and the fundraising total has risen to $50,000 to cover costs.
They have now raised more than $31,000 which they say will go a long way to helping ensure they can get Adelynn home safely and aid the search for Tahnee from afar.
“She’s never off social media and she would never leave that girl. That’s the scariest thing,” Ben said when news of her disappearance first came to light last week.
“She was with Jorge in the days before and now they’re both missing.
“She was so close to coming home. Addy’s got her citizenship and she was just waiting on a passport.
“Plane tickets were paid for. She was getting the passport on June 7 and coming home on June 22.”
Mexico’s National System for Integral Family Development was the government agency holding Adelynn until her Australian relatives arrived.
The organisation confirmed receiving Ms Shanks’ birth certificate before her mother and brother left Australia.
Adelynn had no shoes but “smelled like baby soap” when she was “dumped” at the church in Mexico.
Carlos Gutierrez described a normal Saturday night when she “appeared”.
“It was early, 8pm, there were still people on the street, the church mass had just finished. An ordinary night in Cancun,” he said in Spanish.
“The girl was in perfect condition, only she had no shoes.
“She had a small flashlight in her hand that she was playing with.”
Mr Gutierrez said she did not seem to have been lost for days or wandering around for a long time.
“She was very well,” he said.
“In fact, she still smelled like baby soap, as if she had just been bathed.
“She did not answer the questions we asked, we later assumed that it was perhaps because she did not speak Spanish completely.”
Tahnee, 32, had been living in Mexico for about nine years. She had recently broken up with her partner Jorge who is the father of their daughter Adelynn, who turned two in November.
Dan Shanks, her brother, has barely slept since Tuesday night when he learned his niece had been left outside a church and his sister was missing.
“To be honest, I think she’s already gone,” he said last Wednesday night, but nothing has changed.
The Conway Beach man said Tahnee was on the verge of heading back to Australia next month with her daughter following a relationship breakdown with Adelynn’s father Jorge.
Wilbert Alonzo Canto’s Facebook posts about Adelynn appearing at the church went viral on Monday across the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico where Tahnee was living.
Mr Canto said he went to a religious ceremony for his grandmother, to mark three years since “she left this world”, about 7pm that night.
He said as they left the church, they were shocked to run into baby Adelynn.
Mr Canto said they phoned 911 to report the abandoned baby and the authorities arrived about 30 minutes later.
“When the police arrived, they asked us to explain how things happened.”
Mr Canto said the Attention to Victims of Family and Gender Violence group, which is in charge of the children found on the street, took the little girl.
“This group … moved the baby to a safe house where they keep the baby in perfect condition until a family member arrives for the baby,” he said.
“On Tuesday morning, after my Facebook post about the baby went viral the day before, posts about the baby’s parents appeared as missing for three days.
“Seeing the photos of the parents, we realised the father is the same man who was behind the baby the day we found her at church.
“My whole family and I were in shock to see the same man in the photos was the same as the one following (the baby) the night we found her at the church.”
Mr Canto said he was on Thursday summoned to the prosecutor’s office to take statements.
He said he had hope and faith the situation would work out well but he was very worried about Adelynn and her missing mother but he said the girl seemed well when he was looking after her.
“I was carrying the baby as the authorities arrived. The baby was calm at all times,” he said.
A Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesman said the department was providing consular assistance to Tahnee’s family but would not comment further on the situation.
“Owing to our privacy obligations we will not provide further comment,” the spokesman said.
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