I’m afraid my South African online friend has died. What can I do?
We have been texting a lot for sometime now. She said she moved to South Africa a few years ago for family reasons. She was always online a lot and said the only way she’d ever randomly leave is if she died (she said that after I asked if she could please let me know if she would ever leave).
Two days ago we were supposed to text at a set time. She left my messages a few hours prior on read (she never does that). The messages after were never read. Text messages weren’t delivered any longer and other apps (movies, streams on music platforms) completely stopped updating too. Conclusion: her phone is AND iPad are broken or disconnected from the internet and/or turned off completely.
She never was offline for more than a few hours and she said she would never leave randomly, so disappearing all of a sudden seems really strange to me. My biggest fears are an accident at home/the road, kidnapping or homicide.
I have used her first name, age and city to try and find news articles of such a thing happening, but I couldn’t find it. Her name isn’t on the list of missing persons either, but I don’t think all cases would show up there or become a news article, especially if it was an accident at home.
I’m completely lost and have no idea if there is still anything I can do.
I know my options are probably limited, but do you have any tips I can do? Is there a place where I can see if any fatal traffic accidents, kidnappings or homicide happened in a city for example?