Camera footage appeal over missing Bristol man Jack O'Sullivan
Any doorbell camera footage from the night Jack disappeared will cease to exist on Monday, if it isn't saved first
The mother of a young Bristol man who's been missing for almost six months is pleading for residents with doorbell cameras to check their footage.
Jack O'Sullivan disappeared after leaving a house party in the Hotwells area in the early hours of Saturday 2nd March. At the time he was 22, but he has since turned 23.
Doorbell cameras, which are increasingly common, can only store footage for a maximum of six months, meaning any potential sightings of Jack picked up by them will be wiped from their memory this coming Monday (2nd September), unless it is downloaded first.
To date, despite searches by Avon and Somerset Police and Jack's family, not a single clue has been found as to what happened to him.
Speaking to Greatest Hits Radio to mark six months since his disappearance, Catherine O'Sullivan said: "The camera footage of people's doorbells or CCTV that they might have on their properties will come to an end, and my ask is if people can just check and recheck.
"They may have looked at it a long time ago when the appeal was first out and not realised quite what they were looking for. And also I want to reach out to as far and wide as possible, not just Hotwells, Clifton and Bristol, even further afield.
"Something might show on a camera, that just doesn't look right, something out of place. Jack could have travelled further away from initially where we thought, so it's just to reiterate that time is really of the essence now.
"Please, if you've got five minutes, just have another look."
Jack's story
On the night of 1st March Jack was at a party on Hotwell Road near the city's harbourside. He left in the early hours of Saturday 2nd March.
Shortly after leaving he is caught on CCTV trying to flag down a taxi, but it doesn't stop because it was already on another trip.
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 AS Police about how they have handled the case.
Since then, there has been no significant development in the search.
Community support
Since Jack's disappearance people have come together from across Bristol and indeed the country, to offer what support they can.
A Facebook group called Find Jack has, at time of writing, nearly 58,000 members and features a constant stream of posts from people offering ideas on how Jack might be found.
A website has also been set up about Jack's case which you can access here, while for several months a £20,000 reward has been on the table for any information which leads to Jack, having been crowdfunded by a family friend.
Catherine said: "It's totally overwhelming to be truthful.
"You read messages of such kindness and generosity and people sending hope and prayers constantly, but it's very hard to read that.
"For us as a family it's very, very hard to go outside our house and know that there's a billboard with Jack's face on it. We appreciate it, we really, really do, but it's taking its toll."
Avon and Somerset Police continue to investigate Jack's disappearance as a missing persons case rather than a crime.