Family’s Fyrish ordeal brings out best in Easter Ross community
A TRAUMATIC ordeal which saw a seven-year-old boy go missing on a Ross-shire peak for FOUR HOURS brought out the very best in the local community at the weekend.
A happy family visit to the popular Fyrish monument on Saturday turned into every parent’s worst nightmare when the boy, named Gabrieolos, went missing.
As his frantic dad retraced their steps in a bid to find the lad who had run on ahead during the descent, his distraught mum was spotted in the car park on the hill, overlooking Evanton and Alness, by Joanne Graham (25).
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The Lithuanian family had been visiting the area as tourists when joy turned to despair.
Quickly piecing together the gravity of the situation while comforting the lad’s mum, Joanne contacted her own mother, Annelie Graham, who is an admin on the acclaimed We Are Evanton Facebook page.
While hill-runner Joanne began an unplanned additional ascent to help the family search, her mum set about alerting the rest of the community.
What happened next took everyone by surprise.
Said Annelie: “I was in the middle of contacting the police when I found out from the estate owner they had already been alerted.
“The response to the post was crazy. I thought my phone was going to explode! It was amazing to see - people just seemed to drop everything and turned up in droves.
“People were genuinely upset.”
She said the swift response of the emergency services - with police supported by coastguard, mountain rescue volunteers and local groups including Emergency Community Response and CSR Drone SAR - highlighted the gravity of the situation.
She said: “Fyrish is not a big hill but you can get disorientated, especially if you are a child. As a mother waiting, it’s just awful.”
The lad was, happily, found by police around 9pm some four hours after he went missing.
The Easter Ross-based Emergency Community Response said: “We saw the post on Facebook and then spoke to police.
“We headed up the hill and had dogs on route from St Andrews and also specialist quad bikes. It was a police dog who found him but he was safe and well and happy whilst on the way to be reunited with his mum, so that was good.”
Amongst many involved in the search was CSR Drone SAR, a network of volunteer drone pilots ready to help in the event of a missing person call with one volunteer making his way from Tain to be on standby.
One of many sharing their delight and pride in the local community response later was Heidi Buck who posted: “A true insight into the warmth and kindness of Highland folk…this is the sort of thing that should be in the news instead of all the hate we see at the moment.”
Julie Clarkson added: “A massive thank you, to your daughter and yourself for taking the time to support and help the parents and keeping the public informed…such an amazing team effort from all public service providers and also our local communities coming together.”
We Are Evanton was started during the Covid pandemic and came into its own as an invaluable channel of communication at a time when many were desperately isolated.
Annelie said: “It’s nice to see something good come out of social media.”
Police said the boy was traced by officers and that searchers stood down at around 9.10pm.
In a post shared to the community, Annelie said: “What an amazing effort everyone - the kindness of you is outstanding!”
““The lady told my daughter that her son had already been missing for two hours
