Lars Mittank missing person

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Lars Joachim Mittank (year of recording: 2013)

Lars Joachim Mittank (born February 9, 1986 in Berlin ) is a man from Germany who disappeared without a trace during a vacation trip to Varna ( Bulgaria ) in July 2014. The case gained media attention, particularly because of the bizarre circumstances under which Mittank disappeared.

Circumstances of disappearance

Lars Mittank flew with friends on June 30, 2014 (sources inconsistently speak of two or four friends) to Varna to spend a week's vacation on Golden Sands . The friends later stated that Mittank had consumed noticeably little food during the entire stay, otherwise the vacation went on until the penultimate day without any special incidents.

On the evening of July 5, 2014, the group went to a fast food restaurant . Mittank announced that evening that he was not hungry and therefore wanted to wait in front of the restaurant. When the group left the restaurant, Mittank was no longer there. He returned to the hotel alone that night. On the morning of July 6, 2014, he said that he had got into a verbal argument with German football fans, who then hired Bulgarian or Russian citizens for a fee to beat him up. Mittank was hit in the ear in the course of this, but was otherwise not significantly injured.

On July 7, 2014, the planned departure date, Mittank complained of hearing loss and severe ear pain and therefore consulted a doctor who diagnosed a tear in the eardrum . The doctor said that Mittank should not take the flight home with this injury and instead go to a hospital. His friends flew home the same day - he had declined their offer that one of them would stay with Mittank and accompany him to the hospital. At the time, they all assumed Mittank would be admitted to the hospital and spend the night there. Mittank took a taxi to the Varna hospital, where he was examined by an ENT specialist . He confirmed the diagnosis of the torn eardrum and recommended an operation to Mittank, which he refused. So the doctor prescribed him an antibiotic containing the active ingredient cefprozil to prevent infection. There was no inpatient admission. Mittank got the prescribed medication from a pharmacy and got into a taxi to be driven to a cheap hotel where he would spend the night. The taxi driver drove Mittank to the Hotel Color in Varna.

What exactly happened on the night of July 8, 2014 has not yet been determined. There were several strange and worrying calls and SMS messages Mittank made to his mother in Germany. He asked her to block his credit card and said there was something wrong with the hotel without giving details. At around 3:00 am on July 8, 2014, he left the hotel and called his mother again, saying that he was being followed by four men and was in hiding. Shortly afterwards he wrote his mother a text message in which he asked her what Cefzil 500 (the drug that was prescribed for him in the hospital, note) was.

Around 5:00 a.m., a taxi driver who was carrying a social worker as a passenger became aware of Mittank. According to the statements of both witnesses, he is said to have been standing at the side of the road waving violently, which is why the taxi driver picked up Mittank and, at his request , drove him to Varna Airport , where they arrived at around 6 a.m. on the morning of July 8, 2014. From there, Mittank called his mother again and told her with relief that he had arrived at the airport. She recommended that he go to the airport doctor and have him checked again to see if he could fly home despite his injury. In the meantime, his mother booked both a flight and a bus ticket for her son from Germany to be on the safe side, so that even if he was not allowed to fly due to his injury, he could travel home in any case. Mittank also asked his mother to send him € 500 via Western Union , but the amount was never withdrawn. Even before the doctor's visit there was another call in which Mittank said to his mother that they would neither let him drive nor fly, although this time again he did not provide any specific information about these circumstances. Since the call was made before the doctor's visit, it is particularly questionable who should have prohibited Mittank from returning home.

The surveillance cameras at the airport recorded Mittank's movements, although nothing unusual had been detected up to this point. Mittank appeared to be calm and inconspicuous.

At around 9:00 a.m., Mittank went to the airport doctor to have himself examined. During the conversation with the doctor, a person - according to the doctor, an airport worker he did not know - briefly entered the consulting room. It has not yet been possible to determine who this man was. Mittank then jumped up and fled the room. He left all his luggage including cell phone, wallet and passport behind. The surveillance cameras recorded how Mittank ran out of the airport building, obviously in a panic, and crossed the entire airport area, where, according to witness statements, he climbed the high outer fence of the airport. There was no person who was tracking Mittank on the cameras. At the time, there was a sunflower field behind the fence with plants around two meters high and a motorway not far behind it. Since then there has been no trace of Lars Mittank.

Search measures

In addition to the official search work of the police in Germany and Bulgaria, Lars Mittank's family and friends launched their own search calls via social networks and their own website. On June 3, 2015, the television program Aktenzeichen XY… unsolved also dealt with the case as part of a special issue “Where is my child?” , And other media in Germany and Bulgaria also reported on the young man's mysterious disappearance. Special attention was always paid to possible witnesses from Germany, since the place where he disappeared is a popular holiday destination, especially for younger Germans, and Lars Mittank may have been noticed by his compatriots in particular.

In the course of time there were several promising indications that did not lead to the goal. For example, a truck driver hitchhiked a hitchhiker in East Germany in the summer of 2019 and, in retrospect, believed it was Lars Mittank. After extensive research, however, it turned out that the hitchhiker was not Lars Mittank.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ BKA - Search for people - MITTANK, Lars Joachim. Retrieved August 22, 2020 .
  2. File number XY special - Where is my child? , in Abendzeitung München , accessed on June 10, 2018
  3. Lars Mittank - The Mysterious Disappearance of a German Vacationer , accessed on June 10, 2018.
  4. Lars Mittank - Disappeared on vacation in Bulgaria , in Abendzeitung München , accessed on June 10, 2018.
  5. The Mysterious Disappearance of Lars Mittank , accessed June 10, 2018.
  6. Missing in Bulgaria: How the Lars Mittank case helps other affected families , accessed June 10, 2018.
  7. ↑ The Lars Mittank case: Escape and panic on vacation in Bulgaria in file number XY unsolved Special - Where is my child from June 3, 2015.
  8. https://www.tz.de/tv/aktenzeichen-xy-lars-mittank-jetzt- discovered- familie-mit-traurigen-news-zr- 12324264.html