GREAT POND, St Ann — The family of five-year-old Mikayla Manasseh, who mysteriously disappeared from her home in Ocho Rios, St Ann, before dawn Monday, have issued a desperate appeal for her safe return as she suffers from chronic asthma.

According to the family, they are worried that her health might be deteriorating if she is not being provided with her medication, and if she is being held in unfavourable surroundings.

“Please bring back the baby, if even to leave her somewhere and make somebody find her, just please bring her back. The baby have asthma, she must be scared, just please bring her back,” Mikayla’s aunt Carsisse Thomas, who was the guardian when she disappeared, pleaded yesterday.

“I don’t even know what to say to my sister. I don’t even know how to hug her because it would be me who went out and she was staying with my children, I don’t know how she feeling, but I am not feeling well,” a distressed Thomas told the Jamaica Observer as she broke down in tears. Yesterday, the Mikayla’s relatives, assisted by a police team, were continuing their search for her. She disappeared some time between 3:00 and 5:00 am Monday from her home in Warrick Mount.

Mickayla’s mother, Odesia Oliver, said she discovered her daughter missing on her return from a party, where she had gone to help some friends, and she is worried that she might never see her child again.

“I just want her to come home. I have three children and while I was out the night I was telling people that my three children are my life. I want my daughter back, please don’t hurt her, just return her,” the distraught mother pleaded.

Yesterday, the police intensified their probe and brought in a forensic team to carry out further checks of the house which was reportedly broken into some time before the child went missing.

The forensic team and other investigators assigned to the case also visited a cave in the community where hair beads, similar to the type the child was wearing, were found Monday.

Police had earlier reported that an intruder had entered the partly completed dwelling where Thomas and about eight other children, ranging between 18 months and 13 years old, were asleep about 12:15 Monday morning.

Thomas told the Observer that after that incident all the children were accounted for and she is mystified by the circumstances under which the child, who was sleeping with four other children on a bed, disappeared without a trace.

Acting commanding officer for the parish, Superintendent Dudley Scott, said at a press conference yesterday that an Ananda Alert had been activated and he wants all of Jamaica to assist in finding Mikayla.

“We are appealing to anyone who has any information that could assist in this investigation… we are appealing to you dearly to assist us,” Superintendent Scott said. At the time the child disappeared she was wearing a jeans skirt and white blouse and had green and white beads in her hair.

He said the police had also brought in representatives from the Child Development Agency, the constabulary’s Community Safety and Security branch and the Chaplaincy Unit to provide further support to the family.

Superintendent in charge of the Ocho Rios police, Gary Francis, said that the matter was a very sensitive and that the specifics of the case could not now be revealed.

However, he said that based on the reports the police have received from the occupants of the premises, they have intensified their investigation and have called in the police crime teams.

Meanwhile, the child’s father, Michie Manasseh — who is separated from her mother — said he was baffled by his daughter’s disappearance. He also appealed for her safe return and said he was worried about the safety and condition of his youngest of five children. UPDATE:Missing 5-year-old Mikayla Manasseh found