Devastated father’s sad admission after his six-year-old daughter Airlie was found dead in bushland just hours after wandering away from her home
A little girl’s autism meant she had ‘no sense of danger’ as she walked to her death last week, according to her grieving father.
Six-year-old Airlie Montgomery fell from a rock ledge, just 600m from her home in North Nowra, on the NSW South Coast, after she wandered out of the front yard on Sunday afternoon.
Her body was found at the base of the ledge known as The Grotto, which her father Corey Montgomery said she had visited before.
‘She had no sense of danger, no sense of what the world was all about. She lived in her own little world,’ Mr Montgomery told the Daily Telegraph.
‘She couldn’t speak in sentences, you’d ask her “hey Airlie, how was your day at school?” and she’d say “octopus”.
‘To me, it (The Grotto) was a little place she knew, she’d been there once or twice.’
Mr Montgomery said he couldn’t believe it when his partner Katie Amess called him to say their little girl had gone missing.
‘It was the first time she’d ever left the yard (alone). It’s not like we’d ever had near-misses with her, this was the first time anything like this had happened,’ he said.
Airlie Montgomery (pictured) was found dead at the bottom of a rock ledge near her North Nowra home, on the NSW South Coast, on Sunday
Corey Montgomery (pictured) said his daughter would have had no idea of the danger she was walking into on the day she died
Flowers at seen at the rock ledge where little Airlie fell to her death on Sunday afternoon
‘She would play in the yard all the time.
‘She’d sit in the leaves and throw them or play with rocks. That was her happy place. She wasn’t a wanderer, she had never wandered off.’
Mr Montgomery was six hours away, working at a mine site, when his daughter went missing but soon as the alarm was raised at least 1,000 locals came out of their homes to help search for Airlie.
‘I didn’t get back in time,’ Mr Montgomery said.
‘The way the community came together for us was just so amazing. I’m not sure how, but when things settle down, I want to give back to this community.’
NSW Police are not treating Airlie’s death as suspicious, with officers believing her death was a case of misadventure.
A funeral service for Airlie is expected to be held next week.
Donations to help the family can be made at the GoFundMe page.
