Authorities are searching for a Paralympic athlete who mysteriously vanished.
Sam Ruddock, who competed for Great Britain’s team in cycling, shotput and sprinting events in the 2012 and 2016 Paralympic Games, was reported missing by his family after he abruptly stopped all contact April 16.
Ruddock, who lives with cerebral palsy, had traveled to Las Vegas from Warwickshire, England to attend a Wrestlemania event April 13, his friend Lucy Hatton told the BBC April 27, before she and his family stopped hearing from him just days later.
Hatton—who described her friend as a “fantastic human being,” and confirmed he had stayed with her right before his trip abroad—told the outlet that Ruddock is typically very communicative and active on social media, so his sudden silence “started to raise flags,” and noted that his disappearance is “really, really out of character.”
However, Hatton noted that Ruddock had not “been in quite the right head space” lately.
She also told Sky News April 27 that she had received confirmation her friend had landed safely in Nevada.
“I absolutely know Sam was in Vegas,” she explained to the outlet. “The concerning part is he went silent from the 16th and because he is such a big presence on social media people were quite fast to notice.”
Indeed, Ruddock’s last post to Instagram occurred April 16, in which he filmed himself getting a tour of Las Vegas.
Along with Ruddock’s mother Fran Ruddock—who similarly described her son as “sociable”—Hatton alerted her friend’s disappearance to the local United Kingdom and United States authorities. The women are still looking for any possible new information regarding Ruddock’s whereabouts.
As Fran put it to BBC, “Anything at all to piece together the gaps.”
E! News has reached out to Las Vegas authorities regarding a search for Ruddock but has not yet heard back.
Following Ruddock, 35, being reported missing, the British Cycling organization also issued a statement.
“We urge anyone who has been in contact with Sam since 16 April or may have any information of his whereabouts,” the statement to BBC read, “to contact their local police department as soon as possible.”
