Appeal for snow pictures in search of missing Jack O'Sullivan

The Bristol student has been missing for 5 months

Author: Grace O'HarePublished 2nd Aug 2024

Those of us who live in and around Bristol are being asked to check our phones, as a fresh appeal has launched today in the search for missing Jack O'Sullivan.

Jack (23) disappeared after leaving a house party in the Hotwells area near the city's harbourside, in the early hours of Saturday 2nd March.

The Find Jack campaign are now hoping people took pictures on the day he went missing as it could be quite a notable one - with it being a day many of us unusually woke up to snow.

Today (2 August) marks exactly 5 months since the Bristol student disappeared with the campaign hoping he might have been unintentionally pictured.

His family say they also hope a £20,000 reward for information will finally help find him.

Greatest Hits Radio understands that from the beginning AS Police have been working on the assumption that, one way or another, Jack ended up in the water.

For that reason, the case has always and continues to be considered that of a missing person and not a criminal investigation. However extensive searches of the water have found nothing.

Jack's family are increasingly concerned that there may have been third party involvement in his disappearance.

What do we know?

After leaving the party on Hotwell Road that night, Jack was first caught on CCTV trying to flag down a taxi outside, but already on a trip, it turned him down.

Following that we know he walks across the Junction Swing Bridge on Merchants Road and again tries to get a lift by the Chefs Table restaurant, but this time the car he flags is not a taxi.

He is then caught on CCTV again at 3:15am underneath the Plimsoll Swing Bridge near to the BW Cycling shop and for a long time that was the last confirmed sighting of him, the only other known information being that his phone continued receiving messages until 6:44am.

However, having been given access to CCTV footage in the area herself, in April Jack's mum Catherine spotted him twice more on camera that night, firstly walking across the Plimsoll Bridge back towards Hotwells a few minutes after 3:15am and then again at the Hotwells end of the bridge walking along Bennett Way, shortly after that.

Following the revelation that the police had access to that footage ever since Jack was declared missing but failed to spot it, plus other issues including that Jack was not added to a national missing persons register for several weeks, Jack's parents chose to issue a formal complaint to Avon and Somerset Police about how they have handled the case.

In response to the family's complaint a spokesperson for AS Police said: "We’ve received a formal complaint from the family of missing 23-year-old Jack O’Sullivan in relation to our investigation into his disappearance, which remains ongoing.

“The complaint has been recorded by our Professional Standards Department and will now be thoroughly assessed by a trained investigator. We’ll be updating his family as this assessment progresses."

Detectives say they have reviewed and re-reviewed more than 100 hours of CCTV footage as well as carrying out searches on land and water, by drone, with dog units and a specialist dive team.

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