'I was shocked to find a child'

The woman who found baby Charles abandoned near Faro Airport has told how he had been left with a bottle containing stil lwarm milk.

Maria Lucilia said: "It was a cold early morning when I found him but the bottle lying next to him in the pram had warm milk inside it. I must have missed whoever left him by a couple of minutes."

Mrs Lucilia, who is in her fifties, was walking her dogs at 8.30am on Sunday in the village of Vale das Almas, on the Quinta do Eucalipto housing development half a mile from Faro Airport.

She said: "I spotted a pram on the pavement just outside a house, and realised that there was no one around, which I thought was a bit strange. I waited a minute or two, watching the pram from around the corner, but no one came so I went back to it and looked inside.

"I expected it to be empty - there was no crying so I assumed it had been dumped. Then I saw a little face moving inside the pram so I approached. I was shocked to see a baby lying inside."

Mrs Lucilia knocked on a neighbour's door and the two women took the baby inside and warmed the bottle of milk. They called the police, and officers took the child to Faro District Hospital - where he had been born three months previously.

Remembering how his mother, Katherine Penny, had discharged herself two days after the birth against medical advice, hospital staff alerted the Faro Republican National Guard, who launched an investigation.

Neighbours of Ms Penny and her boyfriend Mark Beddowes told police the couple must have left their camp site home in Albufeira, half an hour's drive from Faro, early on Sunday morning to catch the 10.05am flight to Gatwick.

A resident of the Quinta do Eucalipto said: "Everyone here is absolutely stunned by this. What sort of people just leave their child out in the open on a freezing cold morning while they fly off hundreds of miles away?

"Here in Portugal we love our children, but this really does make us wonder about the British."