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Owami Davies: Student nurse, 24, found ‘safe and well’ two months after disappearing from her home

Davies had left her family home on 4 July, having told her mother she was going to the gym

GRAYS, ESSEX: Student nurse Owami Davies has been found alive and well nearly seven weeks after she went missing, the Metropolitan Police announced. According to the Daily Mail, Scotland Yard said it received 118 sighting reports before her discovery. She was found after a tip-off from members of the public at 10.30 am on Tuesday, August 23. On Twitter, the family thanked everyone who helped find Davies or shared the appeal, "Our prayers were answered. To everyone who hoped, retweeted, shared, tagged, word of mouth, posters, wrote about it, sang about it, however way you helped us #findowami you did an amazing job. God Bless all of you."

Concerns for the 24-year-old's safety had been mounting over the past two months after the King's College London nursing student was last seen heading north on London Road in Croydon on July 7, after leaving her parents' home in Grays, Essex, three days earlier and telling her mother she was going to the gym.

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As part of the investigation, five men were arrested and released on bail, two on suspicion of murder and three on kidnapping charges. About 50 officers were involved in the investigation but struggled to locate Davies as they sifted through several reported sightings and 50,000 hours of video footage to retrace the nursing student's steps. Davies was finishing her final year at King's College London and got a job at a south London hospital two months before she graduated. Davies' family had reported her missing to Essex Police on July 6. Her colleagues at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust (GSTT) said, "We are delighted that our colleague Owami has been found and is safe. Thank you to everyone who helped find her."

Before she was found, the Metropolitan Police said Davies had been "depressed and, in the absence of her medication, may use alcohol to relieve her depression." However, after she was found, Detective Chief Inspector Nigel Penney of the police's Specialist Crime Command said, "She looks in good health, she's in a place of safety, and not currently in the vulnerable state that we were led to believe she was in at the start of her disappearance." Both Essex Police and the neighboring Metropolitan Police have come under heavy criticism for their repeated failures in the case. This includes the fact that Scotland Yard officers spoke to her on the same day she was reported missing to Essex Police. The matter was later referred to the police watchdog, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), which is currently considering whether to take further action.
A missing student nurse who went missing more than a month ago may have been seen in the capital and could be in need of help, the Met Police said today.

Nigel Penney also said, “This is clearly the outcome we were hopeful for the finding of the missing lady, Owami Davies. I’d like to say she has been found safe and well outside the London area in the county of Hampshire and she’s currently with specialist officers from my team.” On August 7, the Metropolitan Police released surveillance images from a Croydon supermarket on August 3 that showed a woman purporting to be Davies. The police realized the error and retracted the images "hours later" and apologized. It said "We previously issued two still CCTV images of a woman in a shop which were titled Owami Davies shop. These images are not of Owami, please withdraw them from any publications. We will be sending out correct images ASAP and apologize for this error." 

Penney added the Met will speak to Davies and try to establish what led to her disappearance. "Owami will be spoken to and we'll try to fathom reasons as to how she disappeared, why she disappeared, and if there was any concern around the days and weeks while she disappeared for us to be concerned about," he said. Asked whether Davies was aware of the scale of the search for her, the officer said he believed she "probably was" given the amount of publicity the case attracted.