Staff Reporter
THE family of a man who vanished while in Spain a full year ago now have issued a new plea for information about his possible whereabouts.
Gary Shearer, who is 53 and from Renfrew in Scotland, travelled to the Canary Islands on March 16 last year.
His destination was the resort town of Puerto del Carmen, and he was due to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day there.
He was last confirmed to have been seen in the early hours of March 17, with CCTV images showing him walking with a man who was either in his 60s or 70s.
The pair were headed toward San Antonio. Earlier, the Spanish authorities discovered that the 53-year-old had been spotted sleeping in a doorway shortly before midnight that same evening.
There have been no sightings of him since.
Speaking to STV News, his family said that they were ‘desperate’ for information.
“It’s been hell. It’s like being on pause,” Gary’s father Daniel Shearer told STV News.
“You just can’t get on with life because you feel like you want to do something but you can’t do anything. It’s nagging at you all the time. You say to yourself, ‘I could have done this, I could have done that’ but you can’t go back on things,” he continued.
“I went over to Lanzarote with him and when he said he was going himself back over to Lanzarote, I said I wasn’t going – the guilt I feel now because I said I wasn’t going. If I had been with him, it would never have happened. Never.”
Gary’s sister Deborah described the disappearance as ‘a nightmare’.
“You can’t even explain how we feel, nobody will understand,” she said. “It’s torture daily, just not knowing where he is. Getting no news, nothing at all.”
Gary’s father believes that his son may have been swept out to sea, given that on a previous vacation he slept on a sunlounger.
His sisters, meanwhile, think that he may have come to harm, either being robbed or having got into a vehicle that he mistook for a taxi.
The last night he was seen, Gary was wearing a Celtic top, shorts and white Nike trainers with green and yellow colouring.
He is around five feet two inches tall, has short hair, and walks with a limp. He also suffers from epilepsy and type 2 diabetes, according to his family.
People with information about Gary’s disappearance can call +44 07722 094907 or +44 07305 243618.
Read more:
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