The parents of slain Kerikeri schoolgirl Liberty Templeman have told a Whangarei court of their frantic efforts to find their daughter on the night she was killed.
A 16-year-old boy, whose name is suppressed, has admitted hitting and choking Liberty, 15, in November 2008 and dragging her unconscious body into a stream where she drowned.
But he has denied the charge of murder.
Liberty's father, Andrew Templeman, said he drove from Auckland to Kerikeri on the night his daughter went missing to look for her, knowing that something was badly wrong.
He said she had stopped texting her mother and friends late that afternoon and no one had seen her since.
Her mother, Rebecca Templeman, says she phoned the accused on the night of the killing. He said he had left her alive and well at the entrance to Kerikeri High School.
Mrs Templeman said he told her that Liberty had offered to walk him home, then go back to town.
Mrs Templeman said she told him that was unlikely because her daughter would not walk anywhere if she did not have to.
