Missing disabled man found in Paris after surviving five days on water
Brendan Brady was discovered sitting on a park bench near the Champs Elysées yesterday by a Frenchwoman who had read about his disappearance in the local media. She alerted French police who then contacted RehabCare, the charity that organised his trip to Paris.
The 42-year-old’s relieved family, at their home in west Dublin, said it was fantastic that he turned up safe and well.
“It’s like winning two lottos,” said his mother Eileen.
She spoke to Brendan on the phone last night and he assured her he was okay. “The only thing now is I’m starving,” he told her.
“He said ‘I’m fine’, and when he said he was fine, I knew he was,” Eileen added.
She had earlier said it would be a miracle if he survived without help.
Chris Macey of RehabCare said: “He was positively identified by RehabCare staff at a police station in central Paris just before 6.30pm. Staff at the scene said that Brendan was in good shape and just needed a shave.”
The reaction of staff at the scene was one of relief and joy, said Mr Macey.
Brendan was examined at a Paris hospital last night. His family did not know when exactly they would be reunited with them.
It is believed the speech-impaired Dubliner, who suffers from curvature of the spine and has difficulty walking, slept on park benches for most of the five nights he was missing.
He went missing last Wednesday in Eurodisney during a trip organised by RehabCare, a charity that supports disabled people. Charity chief executive Angela Kerins, who is in Paris, said Brendan, after splitting from the rest of the group, got a train into the centre of the city. He then got a taxi, but didn’t know the location of his hotel, and from that point was lost.
RehabCare had six staff in Paris co-ordinating the search and had also hired private detectives. A fullscale police search was launched after 48 hours.
While the charity’s guidelines on minding those in its care were comprehensive, she said, the organisation would be reviewing them to see what extra steps it could take to prevent such an incident happening again.
