Adrian Lynch - one year on

Sunday 04 December 2016

A year ago tonight the mysterious disappearance of a young Jerseyman prompted what became the Island’s biggest missing persons investigation.

In December last year family reported 20-year-old Adrian Lynch missing after he failed to make it home after leaving a works’ Christmas party in town just before midnight.

Despite an unprecedented police investigation, and a massive response from the public - police spoke to 500 people, took 200 witness statements, and gathered footage from 18 CCTV cameras - it wasn’t until eight months later that workers discovered Mr Lynch’s body in Handois reservoir.

Police had searched the area, and had even brought in specialist divers from the UK, but the steepness of the reservoir banks and the tangle of overhanging branches and roots made a thorough check of the area extremely difficult.

An inquest later concluded it was impossible to be one hundred per cent certain as to what had happened but it was likely Mr Lynch, who’d been dropped off by taxi near his home had slipped or fallen into the reservoir after getting lost and disorientated.

The mystery as to what had happened to Mr Lynch prompted a flurry of what his family described as “fictitious and cruel rumours about him and how he went missing”, something they said the inquest proved were untrue.

Hundreds attended a service of remembrance for Mr Lynch at the St Helier Methodist Centre in August.