A two-year-old girl was found dead in a garden an hour after she was reported missing.
The toddler was discovered unresponsive in the back garden of a house in Reede Road, Dagenham, just before 5pm on Saturday.
Police had launched an urgent search after she was reported missing at around 4pm.
Locals living on the street where the toddler was told The Independent of a hysteric search on Reede Street on Saturday afternoon around 4pm before the toddler was found an hour later.
Paramedics tried to save the girl but she was pronounced dead at the scene in east London.
The Metropolitan Police said it was treating her death as unexplained and a post-mortem examination would be held this week.
Shorifa Begum, who lives next door to the home where the toddler was found said she heard a woman crying outside and commotion on the street before joining the search. “I opened the door and I saw so many people. I saw a woman crying and I asked her what happened and she said ‘the baby, we can’t find her.’”
“I said did you look everywhere? Then we looked everywhere in the garden and the house. The police came, they were looking everywhere and they checked our garden and our shed and they couldn’t find her.”
There were about 15 people looking, there were helicopters, emergency doctors came.“
Around 5pm a police dog came and I saw an ambulance come and they took the girl.”
A spokesperson from the Metropolitan Police said: “The garden where the child was found was not her home address, but it was the address she was reported missing from.”
The force’s East Area command unit is leading an investigation and no arrests have been made.
Police have not said whether the back garden where the toddler was found was at her family home.
