The mother of missing student Jack O’Sullivan has made an emotional appeal for information that could help find her son, and said she ‘can’t understand how somebody has not seen something’. Catherine O’Sullivan said the past five months since her son went missing have been ‘unimaginable’, and compared what has happened to a movie.
Jack went missing as he tried to get home from a night out at a pub and then a house party in Hotwells in Bristol in the early hours of March 2 this year, and hasn’t been seen or heard from since.
The mystery of his disappearance has sparked a huge poster campaign around Bristol, with no sightings of him after he was last caught on CCTV in the Cumberland Basin area of the city. Appearing on ITV ’s This Morning, the mother of the 23-year-old student described the torment the family has been through since.
Read next: The heartbreaking mystery of missing Jack O’Sullivan
Read more: Family of missing Bristol student Jack O’Sullivan files complaint against police over search efforts
She told This Morning presenters Dermot O’Leary and Rochelle Humes how the last message she received from her son was late that evening, which told her not to wait up for him, as he would be getting a taxi back to the family home in Flax Bourton.
“It was 5.25, I woke with a bit of a start and just had a sense that something was wrong,” she said. “I went straight in his room because his light was on, because I’d left it on, the bed was unslept in. I just immediately had a bad feeling so I started texting, whatsapping, calling him,” she added.
She and her husband were in the area around Hotwells and the Cumberland Basin within 20 minutes, and first reported him missing after walking around for an hour without being able to find him.
“Jack had never done that before,” she said. “If he’d gone out, he’d always get home, and if he couldn’t get home he’d have no issue with texting or calling us to say he was stuck. We initially contacted the police at 7am after we’d been out for an hour looking around, and we were told that was not really how to go about reporting a missing person and to phone back in about 12 hours.
“But we got to a point at about 11am and I was frantic, I really was, so we went through a procedure of a missing persons report on the phone and by mid-afternoon, a policeman had come to the house to take a statement from us,” she explained.
Friday (August 2) is exactly five months since the last sighting of Jack, and mum Catherine said she had pored over the CCTV from cameras around the Cumberland Basin and Hotwells looking for moments when Jack’s wandering came into view.
“For me, I can see Jack on that last piece of footage, I can see him walking in a straight line, with purpose, and he’s not there anymore,” she said. “I can also see so many vehicles driving past, and for me I can’t understand how somebody hasn’t seen something.”
Speaking of how their lives have been put on hold for five months now, Catherine said it was like something from a film.
“It’s unimaginable to be honest, You see these stories or you hear about them and it’s like something from a film, it’s your worst nightmare. That’s the only thing we can do is keep asking the question, really. I really strongly feel someone must know something, and they may not even realise,” she said.
“We’re 151 days since Jack’s been home and we are doing everything in our power to continue looking for him, trying to seek information. We don’t have a lot of contact with the police anymore, we have a weekly email correspondence with them.
“We believe it’s still an ongoing investigation, and we are being supported – we have a private investigator.
“We have some social media, which is not my world at all, we have had so much support, somebody has set up a page, and it’s escalating, and we are getting offers of help and continued support,” she said.
Bristol Live has regularly reported on the latest developments involving the search for Jack O’Sullivan, and has published more articles than any other media on this case. You can read them all, below.
- March 18: Police issue new pictures of missing young man
- March 26: Missing man’s phone last active a few streets from where he vanished
- April 2: Parents renew appeal to find young man who went missing one month ago
- April 9: Missing Jack O’Sullivan’s mum says lost phone could unlock mystery
- April 18: Potential new sighting of missing Bristol student Jack O’Sullivan
- April 22: Community to come together to search for missing Bristol student Jack O’Sullivan
- April 30: New CCTV footage released in search for missing man
- May 19: Crowds gather in Bristol to search for missing Jack O’Sullivan
- May 20: Dog walker and 1,000 taxi drivers are the focus for missing Jack O’Sullivan investigation
- June 10: Family of missing Bristol student Jack O’Sullivan files complaint against police over search efforts
- June 14: Family of missing Bristol student offering £20K reward for information on his whereabouts
- June 27: Oceanographer brought in to aid search for missing Bristol student Jack O’Sullivan
- July 5: Family’s agony as Bristol student Jack O’Sullivan remains missing after leaving party
- July 18: The heartbreaking mystery of missing Jack O’Sullivan
- July 19: Jack O’Sullivan’s family complain to police amid ongoing search for missing Bristol student
Police are continuing to appeal to anyone who was travelling in or walking around Cumberland Basin in the early hours of Saturday 2 March to come forward with information. It is believed the last sighting of Jack on CCTV was around 3.38am walking on Bennett Way.
Did you see him after this point? If you have information and haven’t yet spoken with the police, please contact them. If you can help, please call 101 and give the call handler the reference number 5224055172, or complete the online appeals form.
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