Christmas 'heightens' pain, say missing Jack's family

The mother of missing Jack O'Sullivan has described how the search for her son has become "harder and harder" as they approach their first Christmas without him.

"Every day is hard, every day from 2 March has been a nightmare, but everything is heightened at Christmas because we are such a close family," said Catherine O'Sullivan.

The student was just 22 when he vanished after leaving a house party in the early hours of the morning in the Hotwells area of Bristol.

Despite huge search efforts from both his family and the police, no trace of him has yet been found.

"To see my other son and my husband, the amount of pain that they're in, is at times too much," said Ms O'Sullivan. "But we have to somehow find the strength to get up and keep going because we owe that to Jack."

Ms O'Sullivan has repeatedly criticised Avon and Somerset Police's efforts to find her son, telling the BBC: "It's getting harder and harder - we're continuing to ask questions, which we don't get any answers to."

Avon and Somerset Police's assistant chief constable Joanne Hall, said the investigation into the student's disappearance was "ongoing" and urged anyone with information that might help officers to come forward.

She said searches during the "hugely significant investigation" had been carried out on land, in the water and from the air, and had involved mounted police, dogs, drones and sonar equipment as well as house-to-house enquiries and witness appeals.

"We're absolutely committed to doing everything that we can in our search for jack and to help his family get the answers they need," she added.

Nearly 90,000 people have joined a Facebook group focused on finding Mr O'Sullivan, with Ms O'Sullivan following up many of the leads suggested by members of the public herself.

She told the BBC they had received information from someone who said "they could have given him [Jack] a lift" on the night he went missing, which they had then passed on to police.

"It took many many attempts to actually get a response from them," she said. "It's been looked into and it's been dismissed by police as not being possible, but we don't feel it's been looked at in enough depth really so we continue to try and do it ourselves."

Asked specifically about this suggestion, ACC Hall said there was "no evidence" linking Mr O'Sullivan to the area.

"If there is evidence to take us somewhere to search then that is what we will do, but it is important that we follow the evidence," she added.

Very little information about Mr O'Sullivan's movements has come to light since his disappearance, with only a handful of confirmed CCTV sightings captured shortly after he left a house party.

There was a huge push for phone company EE to release the data on his phone early this autumn, which proved successful after a significant campaign from supporters of Mr O'Sullivan's family, but the material handed over to investigators has not provided any major new leads.

Ms O'Sullivan also raised concerns that efforts to find her son had not garnered as much attention as a woman of a similar age going missing would have.

"I do think to myself, if Jack had been a young lady perhaps half the world would be out looking for him by now," she said. "But for whatever reason this has not caught the attention of the police in the way that you'd think a missing person possibly would."

This suggestion was heavily refuted by ACC Hall, who said: "Whether it's a male or female that's missing, we follow tried and tested methods and do everything we can to find people."

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