David Cann: Family's 'roller coaster of emotions' as they mark two weeks since Southsea teacher disappeared in Turkey

Languages tacher David Cann, 56, of Cromwell Road, Southsea, went missing on July 2 after leaving the Happy Nur Hotel in Hisaronu in the western part of the country after setting off to walk to the ghost town of Kayakoy.

Today marks the two-week anniversary of the former LSI Portsmouth languages school teacher’s disappearance.

Family of the Milton Arms pub regular are in Turkey desperate to help with the search and are trying to stay positive.

His nephew, London firefighter Gavin Thomas, said: ‘As a family, we have been on a roller coaster of emotions over the two weeks since his disappearance.

‘We continue to remain positive, as we’ve only got one shot at this. We are of course realistic and are prepared as best we can, to deal with things if they should not end the way we want them to.

‘We are doing absolutely everything that we can to influence how the search progresses, trying to keep the momentum going and to facilitate the search parties in any way that we can.

‘We would be lying if we said that we weren’t frustrated with how certain elements of this case have been handled.

‘The main source of our frustration is that search teams are not getting all resources made available to them and the reason for this appears to be the bureaucracy within the Turkish authorities.’

However despite his frustrations over the red tape hampering the search, Mr Thomas was quick to praise the search teams looking for Dave. 

He said: ‘We are very reassured and confident in the ability of the search teams who have been out there looking. 

‘We had a debrief with the AKUT search and rescue team on Saturday (13th July) who have been very thorough and professional throughout. We are all so appreciative of the efforts that they and the other search teams have made.’

Search teams as well as dogs and drones were out looking for Dave, whose parents lived in Southsea until their death, over the weekend. 

A Go-Fund-Me pagehas been set up to help keep the search efforts going. 

Matt Searle, chief executive at The Lucie Blackman Trust which supports families hunting for missing people abroad, said the family were going through ‘sheer trauma’.

He said: ‘There’s so many barriers to it. They just want to ask simple questions and get simple answers.’

Yesterday a holidaymaker in Crete reported a possible sighting but this was confirmed to be incorrect.