The mother of missing Cockfield man Chas Thacker has made a heartfelt plea for help in searching for her son.
Marie Thacker is appealing for anyone with knowledge of the countryside around Cockfield, Lavenham, Thorpe Morieux and Felsham to join a search party for the missing 26-year-old tomorrow.
Chas was last seen around noon on Tuesday, October 16, and searches conducted by police, SULSAR (Suffolk Lowland Search and Rescue) and a police helicopter – which was dispatched today – have so far yielded no results.
Mrs Thacker said she and her husband Mark thought their son was “just popping to the shop” when he left home on his black and white off-road quad bike last Tuesday.
Speaking to this newspaper, Mrs Thacker said: “We had a family barbecue on the Friday night the week before he went missing, it was my husband’s birthday, just normal stuff.
“We hadn’t had any rows, there was nothing to indicate he was upset and would do this.
“You don’t know what to do, as soon as it gets dark you know no-one’s looking and it’s another night.
“We’re doing a search tomorrow, it’s a bit random, and it will probably be ad-hoc and probably won’t go well but you know when you just wake up one morning and think ‘tomorrow’s the day, it’s been a week, we’ve got to do something’.”
Mrs Thacker said the search will start from Thorpe Morieux – the village where a possible sighting took place.
“My husband and I have been driving round all the villages day and night, we keep driving that same route and we haven’t found him yet and we’re not going to if we keep driving the same route,” she said.
“So we need to do it on foot, just for piece of mind because my gut feeling is that he is in a certain triangle.
“We’re starting a search tomorrow from Thorpe Morieux Village Hall because that was where a possible sighting was - in the village.
“It’s really unusual, he’s such a home-bod and we’re such an open family that if he’d got into trouble in any way, there isn’t one thing he could say ‘dad I’ve done’ that we wouldn’t say ‘right how are we going to deal with this?’
“He can talk to us. I feel like if he could come home then he would be home.”
Mrs Thacker is appealing to anyone who may have a sound knowledge of the villages to join them.
“Even though we’ve lived in the area 16 years, I don’t have a great knowledge of the area,” she said. “People with local knowledge like farmers, gamekeepers, dog walkers and people who have lived in the village for years – they know of other areas.”
Chas is described as white, 6ft tall, of medium build with short dark brown hair. He was last seen wearing blue jogging bottoms, a blue sweatshirt and brown boots. He also has a teardrop tattoo under his right eye and a swallow tattoo on one of his hands.
The search party will meet at Thorpe Morieux Village Hall on Wednesday, October 24, at 8am.
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