Missing grandfather saved by police drone after 18-hour search

The family of Roy Giblin, 82, says he ‘didn’t stand a chance’ if the drone had not found him

Drone footage of the moment Mr Giblin was rescued by North Wales Police (North Wales Police)

An elderly man who went missing was rescued after a police drone spotted him after an 18-hour search mission.

North Wales Police were contacted by the family of Roy Giblin, 82, after he went for an evening walk on 7 June in the Abergele area and failed to return.

Search and rescue teams and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution scoured the waters off North Wales, and a police helicopter and officers and the drone unit were also involved in the search.

Mr Giblin was eventually spotted by a drone in an overgrown grassy area near Abergele train station, where he had become disoriented and lost.

His granddaughter, Lauren Delaney, said: “As soon as I heard the news that he’d been found, I just burst into tears. It’s overwhelming. If they’d not had the drone, he would probably have still been there now, we wouldn’t have had a clue where he was, and he wouldn’t even be here. Without that drone, he didn’t stand a chance.”

She added: “After all that time, as the hours were going on, I had the worst in my head. As much as I was trying to stay positive, I also had to accept that he was out alone in the night and it might not have been a nice outcome.

“We had to prepare ourselves for the worst. It was really stressful, but the police have been absolutely amazing. There are no words for the gratitude we have for everyone that was involved. They literally pulled out every stop to find him.”

Since launching in April, North Wales Police drone team have been deployed to more than 250 incidents and logged over 50 flying hours.

Lead pilot Sergeant Paul Terry, of North Wales Police, said it was “very likely” Mr Giblin’s life was saved using the drone.

He said: “I’d say this was the most significant find we’ve had in the two months since launching. What’s critical about that story is that we were working with local officers who were doing a huge amount of foundational work looking for CCTV sightings in the last location that we’d seen him and manually on the ground searching with teams looking across the area.

“As we searched along the train line, we had a sighting of him in some very long grass around 4ft high, away from the area where the ground team were searching. But because we had aerial cover, it could capture an area wider than what they were searching for visually.

“It was when we saw a disturbance in the pattern of grass, we noticed his head poking out over the really long grass. If the drone hadn’t have been there, Mr Giblin wouldn’t have been seen. It’s very likely he wouldn’t have been located that night and his life was saved because of that tactic.”