Aimee Walker
A missing Yorkshireman has been found in Lapland a year after disappearing.
Nial Atkin vanished from Huddersfield in May 2020.
However, on July 9, a man called Jerry Ahlqvist found him sleeping rough.
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After taking the man in, Ahlqvist, from Kiruna, Sweden, took to Facebook to make an appeal, hoping he would be able to reunite him with his family, reports the Metro.
The post read: “So yesterday I found a homeless person that was acting a bit strange, he seemed confused and was just walking back and forth.
“I brought him home and cleaned him, gave him some food and new clothes, and a clean bed to sleep in.”
He added: “He is kind of hard to communicate with, he gets lost in his thoughts, takes a long time to answer questions and he just stares into nothing.
“He has told me some information about himself but he ends every sentence with ‘sort of,’ so the information could also be incorrect.”
Ahlqvist’s post was widely shared and some Facebook users alerted him to the story of Nial Atkin.
After looking further into the possibility, he became convinced that the rough sleeper was the missing Yorkshireman and contacted his astonished mum.
In a new post, Ahlqvist wrote: “UPDATE! We have found his mother and I have spoken with her on the phone.
“Everything will be sorted out.
“The thing is that Nial is in a psychotic state and he does not know what he wants or what’s best for him. But we will figure this out.
“His mother knows and understands because she has a psychiatric education and I know and understand because I have myself gone through treatment for schizophrenia and have suffered psychosis myself, so I saw the signs from across the street.”
He added: “Everything will be okay and we will try to get the proper treatment for him!
“THANK YOU FOR ALL THE ENGAGEMENT! We did it!”
Before going missing, Atkin, who is now 26 years old, was working in IT near Leeds.
For a long time, police had been under the impression the man had suffered a mental breakdown and travelled up to Scotland.
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