Jack O’Sullivan’s mother filmed whilst walking the last known route of her missing son

Mother of missing student Jack O’Sullivan has been filmed as she walks and discusses the route where her son was last seen before his disappearance.

Catherine O’Sullivan, 52, talks about the evening Jack vanished after leaving a party in Bristol over six months ago on video.

His disappearance remains a mystery, and Catherine continues to lose hope in the police as any searches have failed to yield significant answers to his whereabouts.

Jack was 23 when he vanished, last seen at 3:15am on Saturday, March 2nd, near Bristol’sr Bunel Lock Road/Brunel Way.

Posted on the “Find Jack” Facebook campaign, his mother has been recorded on CCTV on the same route Jack took when he went missing that night.

Catherine narrates his path in the video, saying: “So, what we do know is that he’s come along past the front of the restaurant and then he’s carried on and then cut through these pillars, and then he’s walked possibly through this car park or possibly on the road.

“He’s picked up again then on the Create Centre building on the corner over there, there’s a camera.

“That road was open, and this is where there was a stationary car after Jack had left this area. It just stopped in the middle of the road over there.”

via SWNS

She continues walking around the area and details his movements, adding: ”This was about 10 or 15 minutes after Jack was seen. By then, he could have easily been picked up over there and brought back round here.

”There’s a camera, which is on the corner of that building (Create Centre) below the red brick. That’s what picked him up going around this corner.

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”What we can only assume is that he carried on through here. There are lots of cameras all over here, but not all of them are working.

”We’ve got images of Jack and he’s passing these railings coming in this direction. This is the point now where we know that he’s here somewhere, but we don’t see him again for about eight minutes.

”We don’t believe he’s gone down there, because there is a camera at the end of there, and that doesn’t pick up anything.

”I haven’t been able to physically view it myself. So much has been missed that unless I can see it with my own eyes…

”When it is very dark, it’s really poorly lit here (by canal under motorway bridge). It is quite creepy.”

Catherine adds: ”As you go around this corner, it’s really not pleasant. I never felt this was a possibility (the canal) because you’d have to get other this (the fence) to fall in. It’s very dark, and when it is dark, it’s pitch black here.

”When we’ve come down here at one in the morning, we’ve brought torches or used our phone torches.

”He’s then entered the car park, but we can’t be certain whether it was from this end.

”He could have walked along here and then thought “Hang on, this is wrong” and then gone back on himself, hence the time – obviously there was this lapse of time.

”I don’t believe he was just sitting still for that time, I think he was on the move, looking for a route out.”

via SWNS

After launching her own search investigations and hiring sniffer dogs, Cathrine has lost hope in the police as no real breakthroughs have been found.

Catherine says: ”There are so many potential issues….to have been to a party and didn’t know where he was and was drunk and in the vicinity of water…

”He’s now crossed over from Hotwells, over the wooden bridge by the pump house, and he’s come down where the Lockside restaurant is.

”If he hadn’t chosen to be on the pavement side, he could have chosen to be on the Lockside of that. He’s evaded a lot of potential issues.

”For me, I’m thinking he’s cleared this, he’s cleared that, and all this time, he seems to be getting himself out of scrapes, rather than more into it. To put himself up on that bridge…”

Commenting on the police’s lead that Jack may have entered the water, she adds: ”The end point of it, the police are thinking, is that he ended up in the water, but he’d have done a hell of a job getting there. Something like this (shrubbery area near canal with no railings), to me, is really dangerous, and it’s pitch black normally. There’s no lighting here.

”The next time he’s picked up is entering this car park from this angle. He’s walked through here and passed these pillars. There weren’t as many vehicles as there are now. These are the council vans.”

Catherine recounts further direction of his known whereabouts: ”There’s a part of this that’s a holding bay for council material. That is the security shop over there, and it’s their cameras that picked him up.

”They’ve got him walking through here and walking straight across here and up onto the grass.”

She describes where CCTV footage of Jack ends: “This used to be more of a flowerbed, and I can see him moving to the side to avoid it. Then he’s walked into the middle and we don’t have any more footage because that’s the angle that it cuts out. In my mind, down there is a very unsavoury area (second poorly lit bridge area). It’s pitch black.”

She imagines Jack has seen something not quite right in this area, as she continues: ”He’s off-camera for about eight or nine minutes, and we can’t be exact about what happened during that time.

”Has he unfortunately stumbled across something he didn’t need to stumble across? Because this is not a very nice area.

”He must have just thought ‘How the hell am I going to get out of here?’ Jack is liable to have climbed over the fence, he’s fit and able and could have given it a go, but we don’t know.”

Attempting to recreate the situation, Catherine said: ”I try to put myself there all the time – what would Jack think, what would he have done, and what direction would he have taken? I never once considered he would be heading back into Hotwells.

”I can’t be 100 per cent sure why I can say that, but my gut feeling when I stood over there, was that he’s gone up and tried to join the road above.”

Through much of the search for her son, she relied on gut feeling,  without evidence of what might have happened. However, some of Catherine’s instincts turned out to be true when more camera footage surfaced.

”From much later on CCTV, he’s come up and followed this road all the way to the top. He’s gone up on this side, because if he had been on the other side, the camera in the underground car park would have picked up his movements. At this distance, it hadn’t picked anything up.

”There are some vehicles that come down this road at night time. Not many, but some cars would have gone past.”

Continuating to narrate the route, Catherine adds: “My gut feeling is that he’s continued to the top of this road, and then tried to make a decision on what to do. He’s off-camera for about five minutes.

”But then when you do get to the top, the traffic is constant. There is a stopover there with lights, and the lights were in action, you can see that on the CCTV.

”I’m thinking there must have been people stopped at those lights at some point – did anyone who was stopped see something?

”Now, we know he’s got to about here (motorway), and it’s another what happened next. He’s off camera, and then he remerges. There’s nowhere for anyone to stop for him, there’s no natural stop here.”

There is uncertainty about what happens in the time when Jack is off camera, as he turns back from the road home towards Bristol.

Catherine goes on to describe: ”From this point, when he goes off camera, I know that 15 vehicles passed him. I’ve counted them when I’ve watched it. I feel like this is quite an unusual place for a pedestrian in the daytime, never mind half past three in the morning. We’ve been constantly appealing for someone to come forward.”

Catherine is certain someone from one of these passing cars must know something, yet no one has come forward with any information.

Asking for anyone who may have seen Jack to come forward, Catherine closes off the video saying: “My plea is if you’ve seen him, it’s so important for us to know what direction he was going in. It could potentially change everything for us. My belief is that he’s continued down into Hotwells. If he’d stayed on this path, that’s probably the safest thing he could have done.”

She then goes on to discuss the new information recently made available showing his photo data usage and calls taken.

To watch the whole video and hear the rest of her account, you can find it here.

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Images via SWNS