Police scour river and arrest man in search for woman who vanished 17 years ago
Police are searching a river and have arrested a man in connection with the disappearance of a woman 17 years ago.
Malgorzata Wnuczek was last seen catching a bus into Leicester city centre on May 31, 2006.
A 39-year-old man has been arrested today - nearly two decades on - in the Greater Manchester area.
Malgorzata was 27 when she vanished and has not been in contact with her family since.
Detectives have said the mother's "whereabouts remain unknown" - but specialists are now searching the River Soar in Leicester.
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The suspect has been detained on suspicion of assisting an offender and of perverting the course of justice.
A renewed search is underway to find the mum, who lived in Leicester (Missing Zaginieni)A spokesman for Leicestershire Police said today: "The last contact Malgorzata had with her family, who affectionately referred to her as Gosia, was via text message on May 29 2006.
"Despite a re-appeal from both her loved ones and police in 2016 – 10 years on from when she was last seen – her whereabouts remain unknown.
"Officers from the East Midlands Special Operations Unit (EMSOU) have been continuing to work in partnership with policing colleagues from Malgorzata’s native Poland and today specialist teams are carrying out a search of the River Soar, around the area of the Mill Lane bridge.
"A 39-year-old man has also been arrested in the Greater Manchester area on suspicion of assisting an offender and perverting the course of justice."
Police are also now reaching out to the Polish community, and anyone who might now something, for help.
Malgorzata first came to Leicester from Poland in 2005 with her then-husband and her daughter, Aleksandra, known as Ola, aged two.
Polish police were initially informed about the woman's disappearance (Missing Zaginieni)
The mum was last seen catching a bus after work (Missing Zaginieni)She kept in regular contact with relatives back home, including her parents Ryszard and Bozena Smolka, to whom she was affectionately known as Gosia.
But in May 2006, Malgorzata, had failed to contact her family for several months, prompting them to report her missing to Polish police, Leicestershire Live reports.
Leicestershire Police was informed months later and declared the mum, who worked for a logistics company, missing.
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The woman's last contact with her parents was a text message she sent to them two days before. In an investigation spanning longer than 10 years, police have identified more than 2,000 potential witnesses, pursued more than 2,500 lines of inquiry and took more than 100 statements - but to no avail.
Ola, who was three years old when her mum went missing, learned to understand what had happened as she got older, sharing a number of appeals, including an emotional video appeal when she was just six and another on her 13th birthday in May 2016. She had been living in Poland with her grandparents since before her mum’s disappearance.
A £10,000 reward offered by police in 2016 for information only saw seven people respond.
The force have had no new lines of enquiries since.
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