Dubai: Conflicting reports have emerged regarding the last public sighting of a missing British Navy sailor who disappeared May 27 from a Bur Dubai watering hole and has yet to be located despite a city-wide manhunt.
One staff member at Rock Bottom located in the Regent Palace Hotel said that they witnessed British Royal Navy Leading Seaman Timothy MacColl leave in a taxi cab with a man and a woman around 2am on the morning in question.
Mohammad Azam, general manager of the Regent Hotel Palace, confirmed on Monday morning in the hotel lobby that one of his staff had seen the sailor leaving with a couple.
The security staff member “gave the statement to police,” Azam told reporters.
The eyewitness account by the Rock Bottom staffer, however, conflicts with reports by MacColl’s shipmates of HMS Westminster who were with him on the morning in question.
Shipmates said they saw MacColl get in a taxi alone around 2am in front of the hotel before they returned to port to report back to ship.
HMS Westminster eventually left Dubai without the missing sailor who has not been seen, nor heard of, since the evening of his disappearance.
Manager Azam, meanwhile, confirmed that a review of the three external closed-circuit television cameras attached to the façade of the hotel did not turn up any footage of MacColl entering a taxi.
An on-site inspection by Gulf News yesterday revealed that all three exterior CCTV cameras are pointed away from the location from which MacColl left in a taxi that had pulled in from the street located between the Regent Palace Hotel and the Burjuman Mall opposite.
Hotel staff said that before getting into the taxi, MacColl was asked to leave the bar but was not unruly.
Once outside, he sat on a ledge near the ground at the front of the hotel when a staff member brought him bottled water to help combat the heat and humidity outside.
A press conference, meanwhile, scheduled by Neil Cunningham, uncle of the missing sailor, has been cancelled
A police officer, Cunningham is in Dubai and has been meeting with staff at the Dubai Consul to help the ongoing investigation by authorities.
Cunningham could not be reached on his mobile phone by Gulf News Monday.
A spokesperson for the British Consulate in Dubai said the MacColl case is being treated by Dubai Police “as a missing persons case with assistance by the Ministry of Defence.”
The “next of kin are being provided support by the Royal Navy and consular staff,” the spokesperson told Gulf News Monday.
