Found safe and well in January after a 70-hour kidnap ordeal, baby Daniel Abreu is once again in the news – this time because of his elder sister, three-year-old Mariana. While the nation held its breath for good news after her brother went missing in Madeira, the stress appears to have been too much for Mariana, who was born with a congenital heart defect.
“She started passing out a lot,” her mother Lídia told Correio da Manhã newspaper in a weekend exclusive on the latest trials of the family. “Her heart-rate dropped and the hospital said it was vital for her to be fitted with a pacemaker.”
Lídia and her daughter travelled to Lisbon for treatment while Daniel, now 20 months, waited at home with his father.
“It wasn’t easy at all,” Lídia explained. “Daniel is a lot more fearful these days. He cries when he is with strangers. He is different.”
And to make matters worse, the family whose economic hardships were highlighted when their son went missing, has other worries.
They live in a makeshift shack which urgently needs building work, yet despite promises of help from the municipal authority, the “cold and rain still comes through the planks of wood, and the fear of losing the roof remains high”.
Elsewhere, the family are facing a court action by the former owner of their property, demanding the land back.
Now “gaining strength” following her operation, curly haired Mariana faces travelling to and from hospital every month to be monitored by doctors. “We cannot do it any other way,” Lídia continues. “The risk is high.”
Meantime, Correio da Manhã reports that the PJ are continuing their investigations into the bizarre kidnapping of Daniel in January, and “have still not detained anyone”.
Readers will recall that the little boy disappeared in a trice from the village of Calheta, turning up three days later, on a patch of open ground nearby. He had been fed by whoever had taken him and had his nappy changed, but as the little boy cannot talk yet, no one is any the wiser at what really happened in the intervening hours.
