'Bungling police looking for my missing son made one fatal mistake - I still hope he's alive'
Christine Durrand's son Steven vanished without a trace but she can't be sure the police have properly investigated and says she's still waiting for him to call
Every morning at 8am, Christine Durand would receive a phone call from her son Steven. He would ask what they were going to do together that day, because they did something together almost every day.They would go out to the shops in their home town of Preston, Lancs, go to bingo together or just stay at home, laughing, as they often did. But on October 20, 2018, Steven didn’t call. And there has been no call since.
Steven, then 31, who had paranoid schizophrenia, learning difficulties and cerebral palsy, vanished the day before without a trace. “Every day I’ve been waiting for the phone to ring, but it never has,” Christine, 69, tells The Mirror.
“He rang almost every morning without fail. We were always in touch. I miss him so much.” Christine, a grandmother of eight, has no idea if her boy is dead or alive. She is telling her story to support The Mirror’s Missed Campaign, backed by the Missing People charity, through which we hope to stop any of the 170,000 people who go missing each year in the UK - 75,000 of them children - from falling through the cracks, by demanding a new strategy for dealing with the missing.
Christine confesses she finds herself intently observing homeless people, on the off chance that one of those unlucky enough to have slipped through the cracks of society is her son. “It’s the not knowing that is the worst,” she explains. “It’s unbearable. But we have no help from anybody, his case has never received much attention and the police don’t do anything for us.
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“The only help and support we get is from the Missing People charity.” Steven had been out in Chorley, Lancs, with his friends, before staying at his sister’s in the same town. The next day, October 19, his sister called Christine to say Steven was with her.
He told his mum he had lost his phone but that his sister had given him bus fare to return to Preston, and promised he was on his way back to his flat. But Steven never made it back, and although he was spotted on CCTV in the Premier Store in Salford on October 20, all communication and financial activity halted.
Christine knew that after spending time with friends and having a drink, Steven liked to be alone and rest for a few days. But around a week after last speaking to him and worried at the lack of contact, she knocked on his flat door and got no answer.
The family alerted Lancashire Police and a missing person inquiry was launched. Shockingly, police told local newspapers that Steven, who is visibly mixed race, was white. With one person reported missing every 90 seconds in the UK, The Mirror’s campaign highlights that those from Black, Asian or working class families are less likely to be investigated or reported in the media.
Meanwhile, Christine believes the incorrect briefing may have stopped people who saw Steven in Chorley or Salford from coming forward. She urged Lancashire Police to check his bank card and when they did, they discovered it had been used in Salford, Greater Manchester.
Call or text 116 000.
*Please note the map does not show all cases in the UK. Some missing appeals are not appropriate for public appeals for many reasons. The map only shows cases that Missing People are currently appealing for.
The officers handling the case pursued that lead and found CCTV showing Steven at the shop in Salford. They reassured her that he was smiling on the footage but Christine disagreed, insisting: “He’s my son and I know him and he didn’t look alright.“He was smiling nervously and looked scared. There must have been more CCTV from the neighbours around the shops but I don’t know if police checked.”She asked Greater Manchester Police (GMP) to take over the case from Lancashire, since Steven had last been seen on GMP’s patch.But she claims poor communication between the two forces caused further delays in the hunt for her son, meanwhile, Lancashire Police retained control. Steven’s story appeared on Crimewatch once “for two minutes”, she says, and never again.
Christine’s last contact with Lancashire Police was last year when, she says, she asked for a fresh Crimewatch appeal and says an officer told her that they would get his case back on the show. After hearing nothing more for a week, she returned to Preston Police Station for an update, only to be told that the officer who had made the promise had left.Keen Manchester United fan Steven was a happy, smiley person with a “great sense of humour”, according to his mum, despite his mental health problems. “He did have his dark moments and he was lonely,” she says.But she did worry that Steven had fallen in with the wrong crowd and would drink and sometimes take drugs such as amphetamines.He was under the care of a mental health team until shortly before he disappeared. Carers would visit him every day at his flat, but his medication had been locked up for his own safety, as he had attempted to overdose in the past.
But suddenly his care was cut, and he started missing appointments, as he had been out with friends. “I think that played a part in him going missing,” says Christine, who also has 40-year-old twin daughters Jessica and Marion.
“Maybe he didn’t want to go to Salford at all, maybe he wanted to come home but missed his train. I want to know what happened. I still have a tiny bit of hope he’s alive. If he killed himself, they would surely have found him.
“I would just like some closure. Someone in Salford must know what happened.” Christine recalls police telling her, “he’ll be back. He’s been gone before, he’ll be back soon.”
“The longest he had gone for before was a week, but he always rang me. This time I heard nothing,” she says. Having recently been under the care of a mental health team, Steven was initially placed in a ‘high risk’ category by police, before being downgraded to low risk.
“They said, ‘well, he’s been missing before.’ I said he had always got in touch and this time he hadn’t, so surely they couldn’t put him as low risk,” says Christine. She feels police have “washed their hands” of her son’s case.
“When I’ve been to the station before I’ve also previously been told by police that they have murder cases to focus on,” she says. “I understand that, but this is my son we’re talking about. He’s a human being who has disappeared. “He knew my phone number by heart. Something went wrong that day, I’m sure of it.”
A Lancashire Police spokesperson said: “We appreciate that the investigation to locate Steven is now more than six years old and unfortunately to date has not been successful in locating him and we understand how distressing this must be for his mother.
“We’ve carried out extensive enquiries in relation to CCTV, telephony, searches of open land and waterways, enquiries with associates, witnesses, health agencies and financial checks and numerous media appeals, prior to the decision to archive the investigation. Police have to make difficult decisions surrounding missing persons investigations based on risk, threat and vulnerability, information and active lines of enquiry.
“At certain points of an investigation, it may be necessary to archive the case, this does not mean that the case is closed, and any new information will be fully investigated. Anyone with information should call us on 101 quoting log number 0820 of October 28, 2018.”
• The Mirror is using its platform to launch Missed – a campaign to shine a light on underrepresented public-facing missing persons in the UK via a live interactive map, in collaboration with Missing People Charity. Because every missing person, no matter their background or circumstances, is someone’s loved one. And they are always Missed.
