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• Twelve-year-old William Walmsley, missing since Saturday, has contacted a friend saying he’s safe.
• William met other runaway kids in Wellington and is staying with one of their families.
• Police are investigating and urging anyone with information to come forward.

Twelve-year-old William Walmsley, who has been missing since Saturday night, made brief contact with a friend, giving his worried family a small sign of hope.

His father, Andrew Walmsley, told RNZ that a friend had received a text from William a few hours ago, saying, “I’m at a friend’s house and I’m OK”.

Soon after, William made a short phone call. He said he had met other runaway kids in Wellington’s CBD and was now staying with one of their families.

“He’d also rung them, and it was a very brief conversation. Essentially, he said he met some other kids that had run away in the Wellington CBD and he’d gone back to one of the family members’ houses. We weren’t really sure what that meant.

“That was all pretty recent. It had been a really awful situation.”

Walmsley said it sounded like three kids had been involved and that one of them had organised the idea of running away after an argument.

“We’d been unaware of that until quite recently. He’d been in town with the same friends on Saturday for a little bit. He hadn’t come home when he was supposed to, so we’d started trying to get in touch with him. He wasn’t really communicating, not answering his phone.”

Unusual behaviour

Walmsley said it seemed William had blocked their numbers.

“If we rang his number, it just seemed to go straight to voicemail. He wasn’t responding to any messages. If I used messaging apps like WhatsApp, I could see the messages weren’t being seen or received either.”

He said this behaviour was unusual for his son.

“It was really hard to guess what might have been going through his head. This sort of behaviour was largely out of character. My assumption was that it had gone on a little too long and he was just really worried about how much trouble he was going to be in. But I just didn’t know.

“It was more likely he’d either made friends with someone or met someone he knew, which made me think someone in Wellington would know where he was. He’d been at someone’s house, or someone had seen him.”

Walmsley said there had been no big issues before William went missing.

“He was a pretty impulsive kid and certainly no angel, he gave us more than his fair share of trouble at school and things. But nothing like this. We were worried.”

Walmsley said his son was tall and lanky and could easily have been mistaken for a 14- or 15-year-old. He was last seen wearing a red hoodie, black trackpants and green Crocs.

Police had followed up on all possible sightings and were asking anyone with information to come forward.

– RNZ