MARBELLA CLUB

Spanish police investigating the disappearance of a Dublin teenager will be asked to examine a claim that she was seen two or three days after she vanished.A man said he saw Dubliner Amy Fitzpatrick drinking coffee in a cafe in a petrol station about 15 miles from her home in Spain, a few days after she went missing on January 1 last year.George O'Neill, a builder who lives in the town of Coin in southern Spain, had contacted Spanish police after he saw photographs of the missing girl as an intensive search got under way after her disappearance.He told them he saw a girl closely resembling the 15-year-old buying cigarettes in the cafe around January 3 or 4 last year. He never heard anything back from the police about his claim. He has now decided to go public about his report.The girl's mother, Audrey Fitzpatrick, said she would ask the Spanish police at her next monthly meeting with officers to tell her about Mr O'Neill's claims that he saw a girl resembling Amy at the filling station. She felt they should re-examine his claim. Audrey and her partner Dave Mahon have spent the past 18 months seeking to publicise the search for her missing daughter. Helicopters and police sniffer dogs conducted intensive searches of the countryside around Calahonda in the Costa del Sol after Amy's disappearance, but no trace of her was ever found.She vanished after leaving a friend's house to walk about a mile to her home in Calahonda on the night of New Year's Day.Spanish-based Audrey has put up posters throughout the region in the hope that someone might have seen her missing daughter. She has given a large number of interviews as she hopes to maintain a public awareness about Amy.Amy's father, Christopher Fitzpatrick, who lives in Dublin, has hired a private detective in a bid to uncover any leads that might help solve the mystery of her disappearance.Dublin comedian Dave Young will give a fundraising performance for the search for Amy at the Airport Hilton Hotel in Dublin on June 19.