Latest news with #missingpersons
News24
17 hours ago
- News24
Search continues for two missing Klerksdorp men
North West police are looking for two men who went missing on Monday last week from their place of work at Afrikaner Plot, Wessel Street in Meirings Park, Klerksdorp. The men, Christiaan van Blerk and Donovan van der Walt are believed to be colleagues, police said. Provincial police spokesperson Colonel Adéle Myburgh said the men left their work place in a white Toyota Hilux Raider bakkie, registration number KWF254NW, to collect spare parts in Klerksdorp Industria, but never returned. 'A search was conducted and all leads followed, but it did not yield positive results,' said Myburgh. Police said the 34-year-old Van Blerk is 1.8m tall, slender in build, with long brown hair and brown eyes. 'He has a scar on the right side of his face (cheek), a tattoo of a cross on his upper arm and a horse shoe tattoo on his upper leg,' said Myburgh. Van der Walt, 25, is 1.6m tall, slender in build, with brown hair, light blue eyes, a black moustache and a beard. 'He has various tattoos on his body, with a lion tattoo on the left arm and hand,' said Myburgh. By Tuesday morning, police said there were no updates on the men's disappearance. Anyone who has information can contact the investigating officer, Warrant Officer Louis Harmse of the Klerksdorp Detectives on 083 607 1395 or the South African Police Service Crime Stop on 08600 10111.
BBC News
a day ago
- Health
- BBC News
Droitwich councillor urges families to join dementia lost person scheme
Families with dementia sufferers are being urged to join a police scheme that will increase the chances of officers finding their loved ones if they went missing. Worcestershire councillor Rick Deller, whose father has the brain disease, is calling for people to sign up for the Herbert Protocol to assist West Mercia Police and other would mean filling out a form that gives police vital details about a loved one with dementia. It includes their appearance, what medication they are taking and where they like to visit."A few years ago my dad went missing, and although it was for a couple of hours, it was awful and worrying," said Mr Deller from Wychavon District Council. "If the worst could happen and a vulnerable adult you're caring for goes missing, you underestimate how stressful it is to try and remember things like what medication they are father, Graham, started displaying symptoms in his 60s and is now cared for full-time. 'Be prepared' "Unfortunately, he's deteriorated a little bit, and he now has to go into a home to get more care and support."He still has the ability to hug his grandchildren, although he doesn't always know who they are, but they know he loves them."Sgt Cathy Atkinson from the force said she was proud of what Deller was doing to promote the scheme."Quite regularly, we have vulnerable people go missing, so we spend a lot of time liaising with families, going out to try and find them."The protocol helps us get all the information that we need to be able to locate them."By being prepared and completing the fall beforehand, it takes away that stress, so it allows us then to have a current picture so we know who we're looking for,The Herbert Protocol forms are available at police stations and across Droitwich in the library, the Salvation Army, and Droitwich Heritage Centre. Follow BBC Hereford & Worcester on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
The Independent
2 days ago
- General
- The Independent
Missing loved ones leave those left behind with 'ambiguous loss' — a form of frozen grief
Rachel Ganz's husband might be alive. But he might not be. More than three months after he was last seen near the Eleven Point River in Missouri amid severe flooding and evacuation orders, Jon Ganz is just ... missing. That leaves Rachel, 45, in a limbo of sorrow and frustration, awakening 'every morning to a reality I don't want to exist in.' She dwells there in a liminal state, she wrote by email July 11, with a stream of questions running through her head: 'Is he trapped by debris in the river? Is he in a tangled mass of debris on the riverbank? Did he wander off into the forested area instead?' And one that remains stubbornly unanswered: 'Are they ever going to find him?' 'Obviously I want my husband returned alive,' she wrote to The Associated Press, 'though I am envious of those who have death certificates.' It's called 'ambiguous loss' Like the families of the missing after the July 4 Texas floods experienced for much of this month, Ganz is suffering from what grief experts call ambiguous loss: the agony of living in the absence of a loved one whose fate is uncertain. Humans across borders, cultures and time unfortunately know it well. Ambiguous loss can be intimate, like Ganz' experience, or global, as in the cases of the missing from the Sept. 11 attacks, tsunamis in the Indian Ocean and Japan, the Turkey-Syria earthquake, the Israel- Hamas war and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The distinguishing feature, according to Pauline Boss, the researcher who coined the term in the 1970s, is the absence of ritual — a wake, a funeral, throwing dirt on a grave — to help the families left behind accept the loss. The only way forward, experts say, is learning to live with the uncertainty — a concept not well-tolerated in Western cultures. 'We're in a state of mind, a state of the nation, right now where you either win or you lose, it's either black or its white,' said Boss, a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota who has researched ambiguous loss globally over a half century. 'You have to let go of the binary to get past it, and some never do. They are frozen. They are stuck.' Sarah Wayland, a social work professor from Central Queensland University in Sydney, says ambiguous loss is different from mourning because it's about 'repetitive trauma exposure,' from the 24-hour news cycle and social media. Then there is a devastating quiet that descends on the people left behind when interest has moved on to something else. 'They might be living in this space of dreading but also hoping at the same time," Wayland said. "And they are experiencing this loss both publicly and privately.' The uncertainty is like 'a knife constantly making new cuts' Heavy rains drove a wall of water through Texas Hill Country in the middle of the night July 4 , killing at least 132 people and leaving nearly 200 missing as of last week, though that number has dwindled as this week begins. Over just two hours, the Guadalupe River at Comfort, Texas, rose from hip-height to three stories tall, sending water weighing as much as the Empire State building downstream roughly every minute it remained at its crest. Those without bodies to bury have been frozen in a specific state of numbness and horror — and uncertainty. 'It's beyond human imagination to believe that a loved one is dead,' Boss says. This feeling can come in any global circumstance. Lidiia Rudenko, 39, represents a group of families in Ukraine whose relatives are missing in action. Her husband, Sergey, 41, has been missing since June 24, 2024, when his marine brigade battled the Russian army near Krynky. He's one of tens of thousands of Ukrainians missing since the Russian invasion in 2022. And she is one of thousands in Ukraine left behind. 'Some people fall into grief and can no longer do anything, neither act nor think, while others start to act as quickly as possible and take the situation into their own hands, as I did,' Rudenko said. 'There are days when you can't get out of bed,' she said. 'Sometimes we call it 'getting sick. And we allow ourselves to get sick a little, cry it out, live through it, and fight again.' For nearly a decade, Leah Goldin was part of a very small number of people in Israel with the dubious distinction of being the family of of a hostage. Her son, Hadar Goldin, 23, a second lieutenant in the Israeli army, was killed, then his body taken on August 1, 2014. A blood-soaked shirt, prayer fringes and other evidence found in the tunnel where Goldin's body had been held led the Israeli army to determine he'd been killed, she said. His body has never been returned. Her family's journey didn't dovetail with the regular oscillations of grief. They held what Leah Goldin now calls a 'pseudo-funeral' including Goldin's shirt and fringes, at the urging of Israel's military rabbis. But the lingering uncertainty was like a 'knife constantly making new cuts.". In the dizzying days after Hamas' attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the Goldin family threw themselves into attempting to help hundreds of families of the 251 people Hamas had dragged into Gaza. But for a time, the Goldins found themselves shunned as advocacy for the Oct. 7 hostages surged. 'We were a symbol of failure,' Leah Goldin said. 'People said, 'We aren't like you. Our kids will come back soon.'' She understood their fear, but Goldin, who had spent a decade pushing for Hamas to release her son's body, was devastated by the implication. In time, the hostage families brought her more into the fold, learning from her experience. Hamas still holds 50 Israeli hostages, fewer than half of whom are believed to be alive. In Gaza, Israel's offensive has killed nearly 59,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which doesn't say how many militants have been killed but says over half of the dead have been women and children. Thousands of the dead are believed to be buried under rubble throughout the enclave. How to support families of the missing — and what's not helpful Ganz, whose husband went missing in Missouri in April, said the sheriff's department and others searched far and wide at first. She posted fliers around the town where his car was found, and on social media. Then someone accused her of 'grieving without proof," a remark that still makes her fume. 'One of my biggest frustrations has been people stating, 'If you need anything, please let me know,'' Ganz said. That puts the burden on her, and follow-through has been hard to come by, she said. 'We already have enough ambiguity." She's thinking about setting up a nonprofit organization in Jon's honor, dedicated to breaking the stigma against men getting therapy, to show 'that it's not weak.' That tracks with Goldin's thinking that taking action can help resolve loss — and with Rudenko's experience in Ukraine. Boss recommends separate community meetings for families of the confirmed dead and those of the missing. For the latter, a specific acknowledgement is helpful: 'You have to first say to the people, 'What you are experiencing is an ambiguous loss. It's one of the most difficult kinds of losses there is because there's no resolution. It's not your fault,'' Boss said. In Ukraine, Rudenko said it helps to recognize that families of the missing and everyone else live in 'two different worlds.' 'Sometimes we don't need words, because people who have not been affected by ambiguous loss will never find the right words,' she said. 'Sometimes we just need to be hugged and left in silence.'
Associated Press
2 days ago
- General
- Associated Press
Missing loved ones leave those left behind with 'ambiguous loss' — a form of frozen grief
Rachel Ganz's husband might be alive. But he might not be. More than three months after he was last seen near the Eleven Point River in Missouri amid severe flooding and evacuation orders, Jon Ganz is just ... missing. That leaves Rachel, 45, in a limbo of sorrow and frustration, awakening 'every morning to a reality I don't want to exist in.' She dwells there in a liminal state, she wrote by email July 11, with a stream of questions running through her head: 'Is he trapped by debris in the river? Is he in a tangled mass of debris on the riverbank? Did he wander off into the forested area instead?' And one that remains stubbornly unanswered: 'Are they ever going to find him?' 'Obviously I want my husband returned alive,' she wrote to The Associated Press, 'though I am envious of those who have death certificates.' It's called 'ambiguous loss' Like the families of the missing after the July 4 Texas floods experienced for much of this month, Ganz is suffering from what grief experts call ambiguous loss: the agony of living in the absence of a loved one whose fate is uncertain. Humans across borders, cultures and time unfortunately know it well. Ambiguous loss can be intimate, like Ganz' experience, or global, as in the cases of the missing from the Sept. 11 attacks, tsunamis in the Indian Ocean and Japan, the Turkey-Syria earthquake, the Israel-Hamas war and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The distinguishing feature, according to Pauline Boss, the researcher who coined the term in the 1970s, is the absence of ritual — a wake, a funeral, throwing dirt on a grave — to help the families left behind accept the loss. The only way forward, experts say, is learning to live with the uncertainty — a concept not well-tolerated in Western cultures. 'We're in a state of mind, a state of the nation, right now where you either win or you lose, it's either black or its white,' said Boss, a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota who has researched ambiguous loss globally over a half century. 'You have to let go of the binary to get past it, and some never do. They are frozen. They are stuck.' Sarah Wayland, a social work professor from Central Queensland University in Sydney, says ambiguous loss is different from mourning because it's about 'repetitive trauma exposure,' from the 24-hour news cycle and social media. Then there is a devastating quiet that descends on the people left behind when interest has moved on to something else. 'They might be living in this space of dreading but also hoping at the same time,' Wayland said. 'And they are experiencing this loss both publicly and privately.' The uncertainty is like 'a knife constantly making new cuts' Heavy rains drove a wall of water through Texas Hill Country in the middle of the night July 4 , killing at least 132 people and leaving nearly 200 missing as of last week, though that number has dwindled as this week begins. Over just two hours, the Guadalupe River at Comfort, Texas, rose from hip-height to three stories tall, sending water weighing as much as the Empire State building downstream roughly every minute it remained at its crest. Those without bodies to bury have been frozen in a specific state of numbness and horror — and uncertainty. 'It's beyond human imagination to believe that a loved one is dead,' Boss says. This feeling can come in any global circumstance. Lidiia Rudenko, 39, represents a group of families in Ukraine whose relatives are missing in action. Her husband, Sergey, 41, has been missing since June 24, 2024, when his marine brigade battled the Russian army near Krynky. He's one of tens of thousands of Ukrainians missing since the Russian invasion in 2022. And she is one of thousands in Ukraine left behind. 'Some people fall into grief and can no longer do anything, neither act nor think, while others start to act as quickly as possible and take the situation into their own hands, as I did,' Rudenko said. 'There are days when you can't get out of bed,' she said. 'Sometimes we call it 'getting sick. And we allow ourselves to get sick a little, cry it out, live through it, and fight again.' For nearly a decade, Leah Goldin was part of a very small number of people in Israel with the dubious distinction of being the family of of a hostage. Her son, Hadar Goldin, 23, a second lieutenant in the Israeli army, was killed, then his body taken on August 1, 2014. A blood-soaked shirt, prayer fringes and other evidence found in the tunnel where Goldin's body had been held led the Israeli army to determine he'd been killed, she said. His body has never been returned. Her family's journey didn't dovetail with the regular oscillations of grief. They held what Leah Goldin now calls a 'pseudo-funeral' including Goldin's shirt and fringes, at the urging of Israel's military rabbis. But the lingering uncertainty was like a 'knife constantly making new cuts.'. In the dizzying days after Hamas' attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the Goldin family threw themselves into attempting to help hundreds of families of the 251 people Hamas had dragged into Gaza. But for a time, the Goldins found themselves shunned as advocacy for the Oct. 7 hostages surged. 'We were a symbol of failure,' Leah Goldin said. 'People said, 'We aren't like you. Our kids will come back soon.'' She understood their fear, but Goldin, who had spent a decade pushing for Hamas to release her son's body, was devastated by the implication. In time, the hostage families brought her more into the fold, learning from her experience. Hamas still holds 50 Israeli hostages, fewer than half of whom are believed to be alive. In Gaza, Israel's offensive has killed nearly 59,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which doesn't say how many militants have been killed but says over half of the dead have been women and children. Thousands of the dead are believed to be buried under rubble throughout the enclave. How to support families of the missing — and what's not helpful Ganz, whose husband went missing in Missouri in April, said the sheriff's department and others searched far and wide at first. She posted fliers around the town where his car was found, and on social media. Then someone accused her of 'grieving without proof,' a remark that still makes her fume. 'One of my biggest frustrations has been people stating, 'If you need anything, please let me know,'' Ganz said. That puts the burden on her, and follow-through has been hard to come by, she said. 'We already have enough ambiguity.' She's thinking about setting up a nonprofit organization in Jon's honor, dedicated to breaking the stigma against men getting therapy, to show 'that it's not weak.' That tracks with Goldin's thinking that taking action can help resolve loss — and with Rudenko's experience in Ukraine. Boss recommends separate community meetings for families of the confirmed dead and those of the missing. For the latter, a specific acknowledgement is helpful: 'You have to first say to the people, 'What you are experiencing is an ambiguous loss. It's one of the most difficult kinds of losses there is because there's no resolution. It's not your fault,'' Boss said. In Ukraine, Rudenko said it helps to recognize that families of the missing and everyone else live in 'two different worlds.' 'Sometimes we don't need words, because people who have not been affected by ambiguous loss will never find the right words,' she said. 'Sometimes we just need to be hugged and left in silence.'
New York Times
2 days ago
- New York Times
How Did the Number of People Missing After Texas Floods Drop So Drastically?
In the swirl of anguish and uncertainty that followed the devastating floods in Central Texas, one of the most confounding elements of the aftermath was why there were so many people still missing weeks after the disaster. Where were they? Who were they? What happened to them? Last week, state and local officials said there were 97 people missing in Kerr County, which sustained the worst of the July 4 floods in the Hill Country. But then, on Saturday, they released a revised figure: three. The death toll there remained unchanged; the county had 107 of the 135 deaths recorded statewide. The drop was substantial, yet it was not entirely unexpected, according to officials and those familiar with the rhythms of deadly natural disasters. The fluctuation was a reflection of the chaos unleashed by a disaster of this magnitude and of the methodical work — sometimes painstaking to the point of frustration — required to bring clarity to the confusion. Whether in flash floods, wildfires or tornadoes, making sense of the list of the missing is a crucial part of the official response. 'This process takes time,' Officer Jonathan Lamb of the police department in Kerrville, the county seat of Kerr County, said in a statement on Sunday, shedding some light on such an abrupt and drastic change. 'It is essential to ensure that every lead is thoroughly followed and each person is properly accounted for.' Last week, when 97 were thought to be missing in Kerr County, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas cautioned residents not to assume that being counted as missing necessarily meant that the person had died in the flood. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
