Missing ... Madeleine McCann

COPS investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann have been informed of a possible sighting in America.

A potential eyewitness is convinced she saw the missing little girl in a Spanish restaurant.

She told the authorities at the time in May 2009, but was only contacted when she reported it again two months ago.

The mother said: “I saw this little blonde girl looking just like Maddie. I’ve never felt so strongly about something.”

The American eyewitness said the girl was having lunch in Montgomery County, Maryland, with a blonde woman and two men — one grey-haired and distinguished, and the other “scruffy looking with a foreign accent”.

The woman, who has asked not to be named, said the girl also came over to her own daughter but did not speak, adding: “The woman pulled her back.”

Madeleine, from Rothley, Leics, was three when she vanished from the family’s holiday flat in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007.

Leicester Police have passed the report on to Operation Grange, the Scotland Yard team probing her disappearance.

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