Missing teen beauty queen is found in London

Apr 14 2008 by Gerry Holt, Western Mail

A TEENAGE beauty queen has been reunited with her parents after vanishing for nine days with a man she met on a social networking website.

The family of Kovi Dunbar, 17, blamed cruel jibes at school about an illness which altered her looks, after she disappeared from her home in Cwmbran on April 2.

On Saturday, Kovi, who suffers from Bell’s palsy, walked into a police station in London with a 20-year-old student she met on the internet site MySpace last month.

The pair reported to detectives at South Norwood Police Station after her mother Cynthia Langeveldt, 39, and her family, travelled to London to look for her.

Yesterday it emerged that Kovi, pictured, has now told her family she does not intend to go home but wants to stay in the Croydon area of London with the mystery man.

Ms Langeveldt said she was relieved her daughter was safe.

As she made the 150-mile trip to London, she said: “We thank God that she has been found safe.”

The teenager, whose illness causes her face to droop for weeks at a time, disappeared after leaving home on April 2 to visit a friend in Croydon.

Two days after she disappeared, Kovi’s mother and stepfather traced them to an address in the area, but when they arrived there Kovi and the man fled through the back door.

Ms Langeveldt, a GP surgery manager, said: “When I tried to speak to her he answered my questions for her and I could not get my daughter to respond. Eventually I told him that my child was coming home with me or I would be turning up with the police.

“It was then that he offered to help Kovi get her things.

“We were still waiting on the doorstep some minutes later when his mother said she would go and see what was happening – she came back a minute later saying they had gone. They had apparently escaped out the back.”

But a breakthrough came when Ms Langeveldt had an emotional conversation on Saturday evening with the man’s mother – who knew where they were hiding.

“She told me she had been round to see them and I became completely hysterical,” she said.

“I demanded to know where Kovi was and said I would be going to the police with this information.

“She then went round to see her son and persuaded them both to go to the police station.”

Kovi’s family suspect she secretly arranged to meet the man for the first time when she travelled to London for a catwalk show earlier this month.

Kovi, who represented Wales in the final of Miss Teen UK and Miss Teen Britain last year, was diagnosed with Bell’s palsy shortly after the family moved to Wales in 2006.

After Kovi was reunited with her family, her stepfather Sion Stallard said they would be travelling back to Wales without her because she intends to remain in London.

“Kovi is going to stay in London with the boy she met,” Mr Stallard said.

“They have got a bedsit but they refused to tell us where it is.”

He added: “Cynthia is not taking it too well, but she is trying to hold it together for the kids more than anything.”