An American student who went missing late last month while studying abroad in France has been found safe in Spain and is returning home with his mother, his family and local authorities said.
Ken DeLand’s parents announced online that the 22-year-old called home Friday morning, nearly three weeks after she said she last heard from him on Nov. 27. His mother is in France preparing to see him and “hopefully she will bring him home for Christmas,” they added.
“At this time we are asking everyone to respect our privacy as we need time and space to reunite with our son and for Kenny to relax,” his family said in a message posted on a website created for help him find him.
Further details of her disappearance and whereabouts have not been released.
Florence Hermite, the French attaché of justice in the United States, told CNN that the student went to Spain voluntarily after meeting several people who suggested he visit her.
DeLand, a graduate of the University of St. John Fisher of Rochester, New York, was studying at Grenoble Alpes University in southeastern France when his family said he mysteriously boarded a train bound for the city of Valence, about 55 miles southwest of Grenoble . He was later seen entering a sporting goods store in Montelimar, about 30 miles southwest of Valence. Bank records show he made an $8.40 purchase at the store, his family said.
Around the time she left on the trip, a college friend contacted the family to say they hadn’t seen DeLand in 24 hours and filed a missing person’s report. His parents said he was nothing like their son.
“He was contacting me almost daily, sometimes every other day,” his father, Ken DeLand Sr., told ABC’s “Good Morning America” last week. “It’s unusual for Kenny not to contact us and tell us what’s going on.”
The prosecutor in Grenoble told NBC News that there were reports that the student had struggled socially during his time abroad and was planning to travel.
“The young man allegedly told several people that he arrived in France insufficiently prepared and that he had difficulty making friends,” the prosecutor said in a statement last week.
DeLand “apparently left Grenoble voluntarily,” the prosecutor said, and “also said he wanted to go to Marseille before returning to the United States.”
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