The Moray parents of an 18-year-old who survived a horror fall from a cliff onto rocks believe he would have died without a massive community response to find him.
Alexander Craib, who is better known as Zander, was eventually found with life-threatening injuries after surviving on the coastline between Hopeman and Lossiemouth for at least 30 hours.
The apprentice mechanic, from Hopeman, battled through the pain barrier to crawl to safety on higher rocks to survive the tides.
At least 300 locals joined the two-day community-led search to try and find him.
And family friend Janice East, who found Zander while scouring the coastline from a kayak, believes the teen was less than an hour from death as water rose around his feet.
However, the family has raised concerns about the police response – believing “bureaucracy” increased the chances of Zander dying.
Police say searches are coordinated by specialists who use the available information – adding communities are “very valuable” in the process.
Family believes police should have done more
Keen bowler Zander, who plays for Hopeman and has captained the Highland under-18 team, went missing in the early hours of the morning on Saturday, September 4.
It is believed the teen was walking to Lossiemouth when he fell.
Concerns began to grow early Saturday afternoon when he missed the Hopeman Bowling Club match he was due to play in.
Parents Paul and Janice Craib then reported him missing amid concerns he had come to serious harm – requesting a police helicopter to join the search.
The family says they will be “forever grateful” to the volunteers who rushed to their aid but believe more should have been done by the emergency services.
Mr Craib said: “We just knew something was wrong. He didn’t come home and when he wasn’t at the bowls we knew something had happened.
“The police asked us things like whether he had any mental health problems. We said no and he went down to medium risk instead of high risk.
“We could have just said yes, but I wouldn’t want to do that, you shouldn’t have to.”
‘People were queued down the street wanting to help find Zander’
Zander’s older brother David, 19, and friends had already been searching for the former Lossiemouth High School pupil through Saturday morning and early afternoon.
As concerns grew, more and more locals from Hopeman as well as nearby Burghead, Duffus and Elgin joined the operation.
Dave Ball, chairman of Hopeman Community Association, coordinated the search in the absence of any police investigation on the ground.
The village hall quickly became a control point for the volunteer-led operation with teams filling out forms to show where they had looked while a map on the wall was updated.
Mr Ball said: “At times there were more people than we knew what to do with.
“On Saturday night both the village shops came to us to offer help. The Costcutter opened up for us to use their coffee machine and Hopeman Stores took all the torches off the shelves for us.
“On Sunday morning there were people queued down the street wanting to help.”
Family friend Mrs East took to the water with her husband Mark and her daughter and son-in-law Shannon and Bob Taylor on Sunday morning.
The quartet used kayaks and paddleboards to get a different view of the coastline while two lobster boats also nearby.
And Mrs East admitted she almost turned back towards Hopeman moments before spotting Zander at Primrose Bay.
She said: “I just wanted to give the rocks a look when I saw something blue, I thought it was just a buoy or something until I got closer – I couldn’t believe it.
“One of the first things he said to me was ‘My mum’s going to be mad’ and then he wanted to know if Hopeman won the bowls.
“He’d slid between two rocks, so it would have been almost impossible to see him from the land or the water unless you got close.
“There was already water around his feet. I think he would have been dead within an hour.”
‘Police protocols would have killed my son’
Coastguard crews and the Findhorn-based Miro lifeboat were called to the scene once Zander was located.
The lucky teen was airlifted to hospital in Inverness with life-threatening internal injuries before being transferred to Aberdeen. He required eight hours of open-heart surgery – only coming off life support the next day.
He began walking again on Thursday, hopes to return home at the weekend, and is expected to make a full recovery.
However, his family believe he would have died if they had left the operation up to the police without the overwhelming community support.
Mr Craib said: “Police protocols would have killed Zander.
“They advised against a search. I don’t want to blame individual officers, they’re stretched to the limit, but it’s the system and the bureaucracy.
“At 7am on the Sunday they used his phone signal to locate him in Primrose Bay but that was never passed to the community teams – they were waiting for a specialist to drive from Dundee to help.
“We could have found him hours earlier if they had told us.
“They didn’t have the resources to help us but they found the time to give a parking ticket to someone on the search team. We’re challenging it, but I’ll happily pay it.
“It’s only because local people, many who we don’t even know, believed in Zander that he is here today.”
What do the police say?
Police have stressed that “extensive inquiries” are carried out regarding about every missing person.
They say that locals on the ground and other agencies are used to assist.
A spokeswoman said: “Every missing person report made leads to extensive inquiries being carried out to establish the circumstances in which a person has been reported missing and this is used to inform further investigations and a search strategy.
“Any search is coordinated by search advisers and is devised based on the available information.
“Communities are very valuable in this and a range of partner agencies assist these searches in line with the search strategy, using a number of tactics and assets in our efforts to find people.”
Police declined to comment further due to an official complaint about the search for Zander Craib being received.