Recovered/Located UK - Cardiff - 3 Women & 2 Men Missing, leaving nightclub approx 2am, Newport, 4 March 2023

[wizardizzo76]

It's this that bothers me:

'I think they assumed that Sophie was hungover somewhere, but she's a sensible girl who works in a bank and hasn't taken a day off for three years.

'She's not someone who's out clubbing in Cardiff all the time. On Friday nights she's more likely to be babysitting so other people can go out. She wouldn't just vanish like this unless something was wrong.

Misper investigations are meant to be highly sensitive to individual context and that individual circumstances of the missing person(s). But it sounds like Gwent rolled their eyes a bit, and the problem is inertia inside police forces. All humans are subject to psychological blind spots or prejudices, but this happens so much. Leah Croucher, the police said for at least a year they thought no harm had come to her and hinted she was just a young woman who'd gone off, and it turns out she was kidnapped and dead in an attic inside their "zone of interest" all along.

With respect, she got into a 5 seater car with 5 other people to go party. We all occasionally do crazy things, especially when intoxicated. But parents often have a rose-tinted view of what their kids get up to. I agree that police could take misper reports more seriously, but there has to be a line, somewhere, I guess.

 

[grey345]

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. Sadly, they're all adults, and all have a right to privacy. The police can't just go geolocating them because they do something 'unusual'.

Unusual things happen all the time. If we sent a helicopter up and put this much resources into every person reported as missing within the first few hours, the country would be bancrupt by lunchtime.

Strongly disagree with this. One of the mothers kept calling and calling the police on Saturday and was told to stop calling. That is disgraceful.

Obviously not sending helicopters up for every missing person - that is hyperbolic. But it wouldn’t have taken much resource to trace the phones on the first day - especially with FIVE lives in question.

 

[JennieM]

With respect, she got into a 5 seater car with 5 other people to go party. We all occasionally do crazy things, especially when intoxicated. But parents often have a rose-tinted view of what their kids get up to. I agree that police could take misper reports more seriously, but there has to be a line, somewhere, I guess.

She got in the car with 4 other people.

 

[UK Girl]

With respect, she got into a 5 seater car with 5 other people to go party. We all occasionally do crazy things, especially when intoxicated. But parents often have a rose-tinted view of what their kids get up to. I agree that police could take misper reports more seriously, but there has to be a line, somewhere, I guess.

wouldnt there have been six people at one point? as I thought one was dropped off?

 

[UK Girl]

She got in the car with 4 other people.

I believe one person was dropped off so that person is correct

 

[wizardizzo76]

She got in the car with 4 other people.

What about the person they dropped home?

 

[JennieM]

Just below the slipway, down a small bank is a wooded area where the car was discovered. Officers have been working there, hidden from view by the trees, recovering the bodies and investigating the scene.

One resident said the area was hard to reach on foot and was in an area where "no one walks".

The car was removed on a truck just before 13:00, with the vehicle covered over by police and the road reopened an hour later.

Police will be trying to establish exactly when the car crashed there following the last sighting of the group, and why it took until the early hours of Monday for it to be discovered.

Cardiff car crash: Three of missing five found dead

The car was found in the early hours two days after the group went missing after a night out.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[JennieM]

What about the person they dropped home?

I see what you mean now.

 

[JennieM]

Meanwhile, a man has been arrested at the scene for prevention of breach of the peace, police said.

PA news agency reported that it was understood that Thomas Taylor, 47, from Rumney, Cardiff, had been arrested after being asked to leave the area.

Speaking before he was arrested, Mr Taylor, a film and TV extra, told PA: "When I heard the reports, I just couldn't believe it could be possible that a car could come off and no-one know they were there.

"I still don't understand it.

"It's natural they might have disappeared for a bit, but the families' instincts are right."

Cardiff car crash: Three of missing five found dead

The car was found in the early hours two days after the group went missing after a night out.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[bringmeacupoft]

Three of missing five found dead after crash - BBC News

The car was found in the early hours two days after the group went missing after a night out.

www.bbc.co.uk

“St Mellons resident Howard Dainton, 72, said the scene of the crash was in a wooded area.
"No one walks down there because it's hard to get in that area on foot," he said.
"It's just a copse of trees and a ditch and behind that farmer fields.”

 

[Loobyloo]

Meanwhile, a man has been arrested at the scene for prevention of breach of the peace, police said.

PA news agency reported that it was understood that Thomas Taylor, 47, from Rumney, Cardiff, had been arrested after being asked to leave the area.

Speaking before he was arrested, Mr Taylor, a film and TV extra, told PA: "When I heard the reports, I just couldn't believe it could be possible that a car could come off and no-one know they were there.

"I still don't understand it.

"It's natural they might have disappeared for a bit, but the families' instincts are right."

Cardiff car crash: Three of missing five found dead

The car was found in the early hours two days after the group went missing after a night out.

www.bbc.co.uk

That's oddly worded... 'prevention of breach of the peace'. Just shows even the BBC can't be trusted to communicate accurately.

 

[wizardizzo76]

Three of missing five found dead after crash - BBC News

The car was found in the early hours two days after the group went missing after a night out.

www.bbc.co.uk

“St Mellons resident Howard Dainton, 72, said the scene of the crash was in a wooded area.
"No one walks down there because it's hard to get in that area on foot," he said.
"It's just a copse of trees and a ditch and behind that farmer fields.”

That's what makes me think they must have been a bit airborne. Looking at Google maps, I can't see tracks leaving the road and heading into the trees being missed when people were aware

 

[rightsaidfred]

That's what makes me think they must have been a bit airborne. Looking at Google maps, I can't see tracks leaving the road and heading into the trees being missed when people were aware

It's been extremely dry for February lately (driest since 1993 or something like that), so it wouldn't have been boggy.

It's definitely possible to drive across dry grass without leaving noticeable marks... especially if you're not braking hard and/or skidding at the same time.

 

[wizardizzo76]

It's been extremely dry for February lately (driest since 1993 or something like that), so it wouldn't have been boggy.

It's definitely possible to drive across dry grass without leaving noticeable marks... especially if you're not braking hard and/or skidding at the same time.

Ah ok, it has been really wet here elsewhere in the UK. I have the west coast down as even wetter in my head.

 

[Mirabel091]

As you hint that might all be a bit "unfortunate" IF it is the same person (name and ages do match) and IF it was the said named person who was driving this vehicle.

Writing on Twitter, Hollie Smith said her cousin, Ms Russon, had been taken to hospital in a critical condition.

"Sadly, the three other passengers have died and we're thinking of the families who have lost their loved ones," she wrote.

Cardiff car crash: Three of missing five found dead

The car was found in the early hours two days after the group went missing after a night out.

www.bbc.co.uk

BBM - Hmm.

 

[DianaWW]

Cardiff car crash: Tributes to three found dead after night out

Tributes are paid to three people who were found dead in a crashed car days after going missing.

www.bbc.co.uk

The victims have now been named.

 

[dunkley]

With regards reports and quotes from MSM - I think we are ALL experienced enough to know how INaccurate they can be.
There is an *enormous* difference between a mother making numerous calls to a police control room and being told, 'Mrs X, I promise we will contact you as soon as we know anything' and, 'Mrs X, stop ringing - it won't make any difference'.
The mother will have been frantic, understandably so. She said 'they [the police] assumed' but did the police *say* that, or did she, herself, assume that was what they thought?
None of us heard any of these conversations, therefore we have to accept that anything 'reported' may not be verbatim.
It will all come out at the Inquest.

 

[JennieM]

A mother whose daughter lay trapped for 48 hours next to the bodies of three dead friends in the South Wales horror smash today told MailOnline how she had to go looking for her herself after police insisted she was 'probably out partying'.

Anna Certowicz has revealed that her daughter Sophie Russon, 20, was 'conscious some of the time' in the car after it ran off the A48 in Cardiff but had 'called out but no one was close enough to hear her.'

Mother-of-three Anna was one of 200 people out searching for Sophie, her friends Eve Smith, 21, Darcy Ross, 21, and two men named as Rafel Jeanne, 24, and Shane Loughlin, 32.

At one point was just 20 yards from the wreckage, Ms Certowicz told MailOnline, revealing a woman volunteer with her dog found the crashed VW Tiguan - not the police.

She told MailOnline: 'I feel terrible for the families of Eve and Darcy, they were all best friends and had known each other since they were small', adding the only people who knew what happened were her daughter and the other survivor Shane, who only met the girls for the first time on Friday night.

Sophie is critical but stable in hospital and undergoing surgery for a bleed on the brain and fractures to her neck, spine, and face.

Her mother Anna Certowicz, 41, said: 'It's too awful to imagine what she went through trapped in the car in the dark until it got light and then dark again over two days. Sophie was lying there for all that time, they could all have been found much quicker if the police had started searching straight away.'

Anna has hit out at Gwent Police for not responding urgently when the five were reported missing.

She said: 'They didn't take it seriously, they kept saying she's 20 and they are all probably out partying.'

'Police took days to find my daughter', says mother of crash victim

Anna Certowicz has revealed that her daughter Sophie Russon, 20, was 'conscious some of the time' in the car after it ran off the A48 in Cardiff but had 'called out but no one was close enough to hear'.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[ifindedout]

This reminds me of the case of Cassandra "Casey" Johnston in Philadelphia whose car was found in the wilds in the middle of an interchange (interchanges or exits are called "junctions" in the UK) by a PI after about three weeks had passed. Although the location was far from the PLS, it was on the route to her home in Bucks County.
The point in the thread where Casey was found, 19 pages in:

Found Deceased - PA - Cassandra Johnston, 26, Philadelphia, 10 July 2021

July 10, 2021 family members of Cassandra J. Johnson, white female 26 years of age reported her as missing as she never returned home after leaving a location in Philadelphia on July 10, 2021 at approximately 05:30 hours. She was last seen in the area of 12th Street and Vine Street in...

www.websleuths.com

ETA: she had no passengers

 

[MrsWatson]

Cardiff car crash: police criticised after wreck went unseen for up to 46 hours

Police had called for information about two men and three women who had not been seen after night out

www.theguardian.com

A 47-year-old man, Thomas Taylor from Cardiff, was arrested at the scene of the crash on Monday to prevent a breach of the peace when he approached the police cordon near the crashed car.

Speaking before he was arrested, Taylor, a film and TV extra, said: “I just couldn’t believe it could be possible that a car could come off and no one know they were there. It worries me, and I feel for the families because from what I can see from the reports they did have a feeling something was wrong and they were flagging it up. Their instincts were correct.

“I have some fears that perhaps when the reports came they had gone missing people thought: ‘Oh, it’s just a night out.’”

ETA Another article.
It is understood he was arrested after being asked to leave the area.


I wonder if this guy is aspiring to be a social media true crime creator.

Reminds me of Nicola Bulley, people using it as a tourist spot.