News / Missing boy was fast asleep in dad’s disco van
CONCERN was so high about a young Shetland boy who went missing for six hours on Saturday evening that RAF Lossiemouth was on the verge of sending a squadron of police officers north to join the search.
The alarm was raised about five year old Bradley Simpson around 8pm on Saturday evening when his family realised he had not been seen for the previous four hours.
His mother Leona thought that he was asleep at her mother’s across the road at Norstane, Lerwick, while his grandmother thought he was playing back at his own house after seeing him on his bike outside her house at 4pm.
In fact young Bradley had abandoned his bicycle and climbed into the back of his father Gordon’s van, which was full of equipment for his BGD Disco.
“We run a disco and have got a cushion and pillows in the back of the van,” his mother Leona explained.
“Bradley had taken all of them and made a bit of a nest and fallen asleep.”
Unbeknownst to the sleeping youngster, the entire Shetland community was that evening being woken up to the fact that he had disappeared.
Lerwick police station and Shetland coastguard sent out search teams, while the local community gathered its resources to join the hunt as word spread like wildfire across social media.
“The police had organised a helicopter to fly up more officers from RAF Lossiemouth and there were people driving all the way from Mossbank (30 miles away) to help,” his mother said.
“Every door we knocked on, the people joined in. It just goes to show what community spirit there is in Shetland.
“Sometimes in Lerwick you can feel a bit alienated. I don’t talk to all of my neighbours, but this showed that people will drop everything to help when a kid’s in trouble.”
She said she was convinced Bradley was across the road with her mother, while her mother thought she was with him.
When he climbed into the van, she said, he had not closed the back door properly and when his father saw the door on the latch he pushed it too and locked it without realising his son was asleep inside.
Throughout the search Bradley did not make a sound and no one thought to check the van as it was locked, until two hours into the search.
“In some ways I feel glad he was safely locked up in the van, but I wish we had known,” his relieved mother said on Sunday.
“For him it’s all been a bit of an adventure, though he was a bit shaken up when we first found him.
“Shetland is such a safe place. We drill into the kids to be careful, but I don’t want to closet him and it’s such a fine line between giving them the freedom to explore and keeping them safe.”
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