Singaporean ‘Good Samaritans’ help bring missing brother home to family

At left, a man who went missing yesterday, and screenshots of people offering help, at right. Photos: Yasmin Zaini/Twitter
At left, a man who went missing yesterday, and screenshots of people offering help, at right. Photos: Yasmin Zaini/Twitter

Kind Singaporeans worked together to find a woman’s lost brother after her pleas for help went viral.

Yasmin Zaini, this morning expressed immense gratitude to those who responded to help find her 17-year-old brother, Muhammad Khidir, who went missing for 11 hours last night and has a developmental disability.

“​​We are extremely grateful by people’s support, some even going out to look for him in their neighborhoods. People were quick to let us know if they spotted him. I guess this is what they say by ‘it takes a village!'” she told Coconuts this morning.

Yasmin, 27, said he went missing at 2pm yesterday. She first tweeted about Khidir’s disappearance at 8pm last night, saying that he had last been seen at Tampines Central. 

“Guys my brother is missing AGAIN but this time it’s already NIGHTTIME and he’s still not home 😭 “ she tweeted.

It was not the first time he had gone missing. He had gotten lost a “handful of times” but was always found thanks to location sharing on his phone. This time, however, his phone was dead.

https://twitter.com/yasminzaini/status/1541033392640098305

Fortunately, at around 1am, Yasmin said, her mother received a call from someone who spotted the missing man in Yishun, close to an hour away from Tampines. He was later found walking on a “dark road” near the bus interchange. 

“People were quick to help, both online and offline. We had people on Reddit telling us they’ve went out after dark to look for him in potential places, literally mobilised themselves. We would not have been able to find him if people didn’t take the initiative to respond to our plea for help,” she wrote.

Yasmin posted screenshots of good-hearted individuals who commented on several platforms offering to help comb different areas.

“Good samaritans all over [S]ingapore. Because of your helpfulness, he was returned to safety. We would not have found him without public alerts on sightings of him,” Yasmin tweeted.

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