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Police have arrested a person at an airport and charged them with kidnapping Yanfei Bao, while they call for sightings of a silver Mitsubishi sedan.
It is believed the man arrested was planning to leave the country and was linked to a property deal Bao was negotiating.
The man had been remanded in custody and was due to appear in the Christchurch District Court on Monday, police said.
“The investigation is ongoing, and several people are assisting police with inquiries,” Detective Inspector Nicola Reeves said in a statement.
As part of those inquiries, police were seeking sightings of a silver Mitsubishi sedan, registration DPH101.
NZ Police
Police are seeking sightings of a silver Mitsubishi sedan, registration DPH101, particularly between Wednesday and Sunday night and in the Wigram, Hornby, Tai Tapu, Halswell, Redcliffs, and New Brighton areas.
“We’re interested in sightings of the vehicle from mid-week up until last night, but with a particular focus on the vehicle’s location on Wednesday 19 July in Wigram, Hornby, Tai Tapu, Halswell, Redcliffs, and New Brighton,” Reeves said.
Bao’s sister, Huafei, said the family suspected the kidnapping was in relation to a cash buyer who was looking to get $600,000 from China to purchase a property.
From conversations with her sister, Huafei believed money had been tight for Bao.
Huafei was hopeful after hearing that Bao had been kidnapped.
“The thing I hope for most is to find my younger sister, and that she is OK,” Huafei sobbed as she spoke to Stuff.
She said she had not slept and was feeling numb as she waited for news of her sister.
Supplied
Bao was last seen on Wednesday morning.
Meanwhile, police continue to investigate a house linked to Bao’s disappearance in suburban Christchurch.
In a development overnight, police confirmed they had seized a vehicle of interest in relation to the investigation, and had searched two properties, one in Bryndwr and one in Wigram.
Several people were assisting officers, police said.
The large bungalow at Iriquois Place in Wigram is down a driveway. It has a garden shed out front.
The owner of the house has not responded to phone calls on Sunday. XDD Limited is registered as a company under the address. On the New Zealand Companies Register, the company lists itself as a cleaning service.
A resident earlier told Stuff they had seen Bao’s car parked in the street on Tuesday afternoon, a day before Bao disappeared. He said he saw the same car on Wednesday morning parked in a similar place.
He believed he had seen a grey coat rolled up in the passenger seat.
KAI SCHWOERER/Stuff
The site of an investigation into Yanfei Bao’s disappearance.
On Sunday morning, a resident, who didn’t want to be named, said he had only seen the people in the Iriquois Place house police were looking at a few times.
He said they said hello in a different language, and he thought the house was a flat people ran some businesses out of.
Previously, Stuff reported Bao spoke to a friend 45 minutes after she was last seen.
At 11.16am on Wednesday, Bao rang her friend Jin Tian and had a four-minute conversation with her.
During the conversation, Bao asked Tian how someone she was working with could transfer $600,000 (more than 2.6 million RMB) from China to pay cash for a house.
Iain McGregor/Stuff
Police search Wigram village green on Thursday.
A screenshot showing the date, time and duration of the call was seen by Stuff.
Tian told Stuff, in an exclusive interview, the conversation was in Mandarin and Bao sounded normal with nothing to indicate anything was wrong.
Following Stuff’s story, police contacted Tian and interviewed her in depth about the conversation. They later asked her to sign a statement.
Tian said police were questioning her all day about the WeChat conversation.
Bao had been going door to door for work at 10.30am on Vickerys Rd when she went missing in the Wigram suburb on Wednesday.
Detective Inspector Nicola Reeves said on Friday that one of her phones was found several kilometres west on the southern motorway near Blakes Rd.
At a press conference on Friday, Reeves said police were “growing increasingly concerned” for Bao and were treating her disappearance as unexplained.
supplied/Stuff
A younger Bao, taken from a family portrait in China.
Police had received 40 tips from the public, and were assessing the information.
Bao’s distraught family, speaking from China, said they were heartbroken.
Bao’s sister, Huafei Bao said: “My mum has been crying since, and passed out a couple of times and my dad is heartbroken. We are just ordinary people. What can we do? We are so far away.”
Police contacted Huafei on Saturday night to ask for Bao’s ex-husband’s details in China, but have not received any further updates on Sunday morning.
Anyone with information that could help police’s investigation is asked to call them on 105 or make a report online at https://www.police.govt.nz/use-105 using ‘Update Report’ and the file number 230720/5911.
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