Daily Mail Headline; says; ' The first eyewitness account of the frantic moments after Madeleine McCann disappeared can be revealed today. Nanny Charlotte Pennington confirms that Kate McCann did scream: "They've taken her, they've taken her!"
The mother's precise words have become a pivotal issue in the case, with Portuguese police questioning why she would automatically assume Maddie had been abducted.
Mrs McCann's family have countered this by insisting they recall her shouting: "Madeleine's gone."
Miss Pennington, however, one of the first people to set foot in the couple's apartment after the disappearance, says she heard the mother use both phrases. The 20-year-old Briton, who tended children for the Mark Warner holiday complex in Praia da Luz, firmly believes the McCanns are innocent. Speaking publicly for the first time yesterday, she described Mrs McCann in the aftermath as "a broken woman" who was shuddering and unable to move. We are trained to comfort people in this type of situation but she was just inconsolable," she said.
Miss Pennington is considered a vital witness by Portuguese detectives with whom she spent more than four-and-a-half hours giving a statement.
Talking from her mother's home in Leatherhead, Surrey, yesterday she told the Daily Mail: "I was in the apartment less than five minutes after they found that Madeleine had gone.When we were coming out we saw Kate and she was screaming: 'They've taken her, they've taken her!' I was standing right in front of her outside the apartment's back door, in the alleyway. I was very close to her. It might not have been the first thing she said. But she definitely said it.I was one of three Mark Warner staff who saw her shouting it. They have all given statements to the Portuguese police saying that."
The "they've taken her" version of events was first given in the Portuguese press two days after Madeleine disappeared on May 3. It remained unchallenged until last Thursday when a source close to the McCann family claimed Kate had actually shouted: 'Madeleine's gone!'
