Fundraising festival organised for missing Luke Price sees huge support
The friends of missing Luke Price have organised a festival to raise money for the National Missing Person's Helpline as the search for the young man continues.
Luke Price, aged 27, has been missing from his partner's home in Mountkenneth/O'Curry Street, Limerick city since the evening of Tuesday, January 14, when he last seen at around 9pm.
Family and friends of Luke have taken part in a massive search for Luke since he went missing. Luke lives in Portlaoise but spends a lot of time staying in Limerick as his partner and brother live there.
Now, an all-day festival is being held in Tullamore this weekend, put on by Luke's friends and family, to raise money for the National Missing Persons Helpline. Oceann McCormack, a close friend of Luke's who plays in a band with Luke's brother, spoke to the Irish Mirror ahead of the festival.
'Myself and Nathan (Luke's brother) would have been best friends when we were children,' Oceann told the Irish Mirror. 'We both were raised in the village of Geashill in the Midlands, just a few miles outside of Tullamore.
'I would have known Luke as a baby, and grew up with Nathan being my best friend, but Luke being like a little brother to me, pretty much my whole life.
'I would have always considered Luke to be family, like myself and Nathan were always closer. But myself and Luke had a great relationship, and a very different relationship to what I do with Nathan.'
Oceann says the support from the public in searching for Luke has been immense, with organisations like the National Missing Persons Helpline showing unwavering help.
'The kindness of friends, family and even strangers, it's restored a bit of faith in humanity,' he shared.
'We've had people who never even looked for Luke taking a week off work to help us join because they're friends with us, never even met Luke.
'We've had a huge amount of help from organisations like the National Missing Persons Helpline.
'We had a couple of guides from the Tipperary search and rescue help us out, kind of of their own accord, not on an official basis, but just come and help us out.
'We got a huge amount of traction from the Irish metal scene. I think every band in the country was sharing around Luke's picture, every metal promoter, everything.
'A lot of different communities really had our backs with it. Now, unfortunately, we're still no closer to finding him than today. He went missing.
'But it's really refreshing to have such a system and such a network of support there, and I think we would have lost our minds if we didn't have so many good Samaritans hopping on helping us'.
Oceann says they had always planned to run an event to raise money for the helpline, but they did not think it would be because a dear friend had gone missing.
'We always kind of wanted to do something for the National Missing Persons helpline,' he said. 'We didn't realise this was going to be it.
'The bar manager, a long-term friend of ours, was saying, 'Would you consider doing an all day sort of thing?' You could raise a bit of money for Luke, because he would have known Luke well as well."
The festival will kick off in Tullamore this Saturday, with a massive line-up of Irish metal bands, playing until late. The event is family friendly, with face painting and a talk from a National Missing Persons Helpline representative.
'We have some of the country's hottest underground rock and metal bands… Each band will be playing a half hour slot with the headliners doing 45 minutes.
'We'll be going till whenever we're all kicked out. Music should be going till about between 12 and 1.
'We have a food truck… And we've a few fun little extra side things. We'll be doing a raffle. We've received loads of donations for the raffle with the key main prize being a one of a kind hoodie for the festival.'
'We're also having face paintings. So it's going to be an all-day, family-friendly event until 7pm.
'We'll have a representative from the National Missing Persons Helpline, to just essentially tell the facts about missing people and their organisation, what they do, how underfunded they are.
'And then we'll be presenting a comically-oversized check to him a few weeks after the festival as well.'
Oceann says if anyone wishes to help in the ongoing search for missing Luke, the best thing they can do is to contact Gardaí if they see or hear anything.
'Keep an eye out, if you think that you have seen him, contact Henry Street Garda station,' he said.
'It's something that we've reiterated a billion times since Luke went missing. There's no point getting on to us or the Look for Luke Facebook page that was set up because we cannot file a report on somebody's behalf.'
He added: 'If anybody wants to donate to the festival, all profits are going to charity'.
The Tullamore Phoenix Festival takes place in John Lee's Bar this Saturday, May 31. A fundraiser has been launched ahead of the festival for the National Missing Persons Helpline, with €1,317 raised out of the €2,500 target. To donate, head here. You can find more out about the festival here.
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