[imagesource: Buckeye Police Department]

Amidst all the coverage of the Gabby Petito case and the ongoing search for her fiancé Brian Laundrie as a “person of interest”, there are hundreds of missing person cases that have been overlooked.

One that is finally getting the media attention it deserves is that of Daniel Robinson, a 24-year-old geologist who was last seen in the Arizona desert on the morning of June 23.

Sadly, his family are worried that it might be too late.

Per HuffPost, Robinson’s father, David Robinson, laments the difference in coverage and resources between the two cases, saying that one wishes to live in a “world where everything [is] equal, but it’s really not equal”:

He said he sympathises with the Petito family, while also feeling that the onslaught of media attention paid to her case has been “hurtful.”

Robinson was on a job site in the Arizona desert at the time and was last seen a little disoriented by a colleague, before driving his Jeep into the desert with no explanation.

The vehicle was found a month later, 6,4 kilometres away, crashed into a ravine with airbags deployed:

Nobody was inside, with investigators finding Robinson’s clothes, phone, keys, and wallet.

A human skull was found in late July near where the Jeep had been, but it doesn’t seem to be Robinson’s.

In charge of the case is the Buckeye Police Department but they have made very little headway, which has forced the Robinson family to crowdsource themselves in order to get things moving:

A GoFundMe page set up for Robinson, was born without a right hand, has raised more than three times its initial goal, funding private investigation services and supplies for volunteers willing to search the desert.

A 180-square kilometre search, using all-terrain vehicles, cadaver dogs, a drone, and a helicopter, has already happened with no further clues unearthed.

The Independent also reports that Robinson’s mother and siblings flew to Arizona to hold a press conference outside the Buckeye Police Department on Sunday.

They did this to try and put pressure on the authorities to find their family member.

The department said that it does not suspect foul play, but the family is dubious and have hired private investigator Jeff McGrath to look into things further.

As a former police officer, McGrath has more questions than answers at this stage:

Evidence from the vehicle showed that it crashed and then drove another 11 miles [17km] before ending up in the ravine with a last known speed of 30mph, Mr McGrath told The Independent – even though he couldn’t recreate those speed conditions in the terrain.

“We definitely have something suspicious here,” he said, adding: “At minimum, we have an endangered missing persons case. If he’s not right in the head and he just kind of wanders off, that could be a problem.”

…”Maybe he did just take off, but he’s got nothing. There’s no evidence that he built an account somewhere to have money; he didn’t have much money to begin with. He didn’t have a phone, his ID … we didn’t see any of that pre-planning that you would see if somebody just wanted to just go be someone else.”

Robinson’s colleague, Ken Elliott, who was working with him the morning he disappeared, said that Robinson was speaking strangely and staring off into the desert before he just drove off:

Mr Elliott later followed the vehicle tracks, which he said led further into the desert.

“When I saw that, my heart sank, because it just told me that he wasn’t going home,” Mr Elliott told The Independent. “Something was really not right.”

The family also told police that some of Robinson’s Instagram photos seem to have been deleted since he went missing.

The department has assured everyone that the case is a top priority but Robinson’s older brother, Roger Cawley-Robinson, is worried that it is a little too late:

“If they had been quick about it in the beginning, we wouldn’t be here three months later.”

Hopefully, the spotlight on this desert mystery will unearth all the information needed to find Daniel Robinson.

[sources:huffpost&independent]