The sad English child was spotted with a woman in Brussels, Belgium, by Antonio Migliardi. She asked for a chocolate flavour ice — Maddie’s favourite. And she had a distinctive eye mark like Maddie.
It happened outside a KBC bank minutes after CCTV cameras on the building picked up a girl like Maddie with the North African-looking woman.
Antonio, 44, saw the English girl and the French-speaking woman last Monday.
The Belgian-Italian said last night: “The woman was very severe with the child. She held her hand firmly and kept pulling her closer. When I gave the ice cream to the child she stood frozen. The lady took it in her place. Normally a happy child always takes the ice. This was not a normal situation.”
He recalled: “It was about 13.40 or 13.45 hours. The lady had a headscarf and the blonde girl I guess was five. The little girl looked healthy but very sad. She had her eyes towards the floor and was too shy to look up. The lady asked her in a mixture of French and English what she wanted."
“The girl answered in English. She looked up for only a second, with an unhappy face, and said, ‘Chocolate please’ then she looked down again.
“She did seem to have some kind of spot in her eye, like a comma. I had not seen the pictures of Maddie with a spot in her eye at that time. I found them a very strange couple.”
