His last words were “We won’t see each other! I’m leaving! You won’t see me again!” happened. He fulfilled this. Santiago José -Chago- as everyone called him, left home phone, keys, documents and money. He closed the door and left. He is 16 years old, lives in Tenerife, and they have been searching tirelessly for him since September 6th. This missing. “We have been searching tirelessly for over a month,” his sister Luz laments sadly. “He’s a very calm, family-oriented kid, this whole thing is just weird from start to finish.”
“He woke up angry, started shouting at my mother and my sister…” describes the young woman in front of Prensa Ibérica’s events and investigation portal CASO ABIERTO. It also retraces Chago’s final steps. They fled to a mountain. “Chago leaves the house, my little brother follows him, and they arrive at this mountain. Chago half-laughs and says, ‘Get out of here, I’ll jump!’ he says, but he says it himself.” The little boy returns and is never seen again.
The police investigation does not rule out anything; “They believe my brother may have ended his life there.” Now everything is reversed. Dozens of people claim to have seen him in the Los Gladiolos (Santa Cruz de Tenerife) neighborhood “dirty, wearing the clothes he disappeared in (white t-shirt, blue jeans),” Luz said. I wouldn’t be alone. “Everyone gives me the same woman’s name.”
“Your brother is there”
“We reported immediately,” Luz explains. “If my brother was angry, he came home an hour later. Chago is a very familiar person, very calm and would never do something like this.” The agents immediately activated the disappearance protocol: Did he ever leave home? Was he well in the previous days? “My father died five months ago. “He took his life…” Luz explains, “He and Chago didn’t talk to each other, they didn’t get along.” The minor acknowledged the pain at its worst, “carried it inside, he got over it, he felt bad.” .
The National Police took over the investigation. As they made progress, the family went searching. There is no sign of “we went all over the mountain.”
“We insisted on the mountain because of course, taking into account his state of mind, the fact that he didn’t come back and that this was not normal for him… we did not rule out that he might have stayed there.” Posters spread without a clue, without leaving a trace. With these, the only clue emerged: “Your brother is in Los Gladiolos, your brother is there.”
“He takes people, including children. He gave me a glass of water and I fell asleep. I don’t remember anything. There was a big man at the door, a bully.”
A region: Los Gladioli and the name of a woman. Chago’s family started getting help the same coordinates over and over again. “We decided to go there,” Luz explains. Residents of the neighborhood, which was “quite dangerous, belligerent, a bit suspicious”, refused to talk. There was an agreement of silence. “We won’t give any clues.”
Then came a statement: “I know that woman, she has a little bit of everything and is dedicated to taking in people, including children.” The phrase mentions drugs, retail and alcohol. “He gave me a glass of water, I fell asleep. I don’t remember much, a shanty house near the Zurita bridge. In the upper part of the house there were children and detained people, at the door was a big man, a bully”.
Luz wandered the neighborhood for a few nights. The rest of the family did this during the day, too. After constant visits and raids, people stopped seeing the little one.
“It wasn’t just one or two people. It was a lot of leads from different people, my mom, my sister, me, and they all put it in there,” Luz explains. “All the clues come from people who know him, they don’t come forward after they see the poster. A cousin of mine claims to have seen him and ran away… Chago is not well.”
“disappeared”
“Chago was a very simple person, he could barely go out on the street.” Because I was there? “As a result of the disappearance, we learned thatA few months ago a friend took him to live with adults. Apparently, my little brother went out and went there,” his sister complains. “He was convinced, deceived… Nothing was normal from the beginning, he was not aggressive, look how he left the house. .. He is extremely organized, he has to put everything in its place and now he can be in a house like this…” The family is in shock again.
The police know the truth, “this is a neighborhood that doesn’t like a police presence,” Luz laments. “We need them to look there, but really look.” Luz can’t find him on her own. Because it brings with it risk, he keeps looking for her on the streets, but she is never there. “If no one has seen him lately, and no one has seen him before. If no one can stop him now, I will begin to believe that that house exists and that my brother is being held there.”
Chago is a 16-year-old young man, calm, slow and familiar. He lost his father and “lost” himself. “I know everything traumatized him. He even said he didn’t want it.“He complains about Luz, “but we’d like to think we can find her and give her the help she needs.”
Tall, slim and with fairly long hair, he “walks with his shoulders pulled forward a little in case anyone sees him.” He had just enrolled in a mechanical vocational training course, “he was so excited, he just bought everything.” The course has started and he is not there.