UNDERWATER SEARCH FOR MISSING GIRL

The searches will focus on the Dewsbury Moor area and an underwater team will investigate a pond in the vicinity.

Shannon, from Moorside Road, Dewsbury Moor, West Yorkshire, failed to return home from school after a swimming trip on Tuesday afternoon.

A police operation involving 250 officers and desperate day-and-night searches by friends and relatives have failed to find her.

On Friday, officers said they were "gravely concerned" about the schoolgirl.

Police also released CCTV footage showing the "timid" youngster shortly before she disappeared. The CCTV images, released by West Yorkshire Police, show Shannon entering and leaving the Dewsbury Sports Centre Swimming Pool, surrounded by a group of friends.

Detective Superintendent Andy Brennan told a press conference how Shannon returned to school with her friends after the swimming trip. But a sighting of her leaving school at 3.10pm remains the last confirmed time she was spotted despite a number of other unconfirmed sightings after this, which are still under investigation.

Mr Brennan also confirmed statements made by Shannon's natural father, who separated from her mother, Karen, a number of years ago, that she had written on her bedroom wall about wanting to go and live with him. But Mr Brennan said this was just part of an array of scribbles that the youngster had daubed on the wall.

The nine-year-old had also expressed desires to leave home, Mr Brennan added. "She had suggested to a number of friends that she didn't want to go home and we are investigating that as well. We do remain gravely concerned," he said.

Shannon's mother Karen, 32, said her daughter had not expressed a wish to go and live with her father and had a close relationship with her stepfather, 22-year-old Craig Meehan, whom she had lived with for four years.