A distraught mother is desperately searching for her student son who has vanished in mysterious circumstances. Fears have been raised for the safety of 20-year-old law student Domen Simonic from east London’s Queen Mary University who went missing during a visit to his home in Slovenia.
His mother Eva, 52, who got a domestic job in London to be close to her only son, returned to Slovenia last week to join the search—in a town where two men the same age have vanished who were both later found dead.
“She is very distressed,” family friend Tadeja Ribic told the East London Advertiser.
“You can’t be here when your child goes missing. She is there looking in parks and rivers searching for him.”
Fellow students at Queen Mary’s in Mile End raised nearly £1,400 to pay for a private investigator to help in the search to find Domen, an active volunteer who organises free legal advice sessions in the East End.
He disappeared off the street in Maribor, near the Austrian border some 70km from his home town of Celje, east of the Slovene capital Ljubljana, the a day after he arrived on February 21.
Domen was last seen talking to strangers outside a Maribor nightclub. His friends contacted local police, then phoned Eva in London the next morning.
“She has even called in a clairvoyant, trying everything,” Tadeja revealed.
“Eva is really close to Domen and moved to London for work as a nanny to pay for his tuition fees and be near him. She is terrified something has happened to him.”
There were other cases of young men vanishing in the area, Tadeja revealed.
“Two boys the same age went missing in the past 13 months, both later found dead,” she added. “One was found after four days, the other after a month.
“People think it could have been a serial killer. Now Domen has gone missing everyone is worried.”
Police divers searched 2km of the Drava river, but have found no trace. The search has also been hampered this week by snow.
Fellow law student Nadia Hafedh told the Advertiser: “The police are treating it as ‘an act of crime’, not just a missing person, and think he may have been harmed by a third party.”
Domen first arrived in London in September, 2014, to study law at Queen Mary’s and has been renting a flat with fellow students in Bethnal Green.
He had returned to Slovenia to visit his father Ervin when he vanished.
The Slovene London embassy has been following events, but so far has been unable to shed light on his disappearance.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here