The Sun Herald (Sydney, Australia)
Sunday
Family’s grief for missing son
Sally Rawsthorne | Crime reporter
One October evening in 2014, Sevak Simonian headed out for a bushwalk in the Kanangra-Boyd National Park, which is part of the Blue Mountains.
The 21-year-old hasn’t been seen since. Mr Simonian was a keen and experienced bushwalker and his plans for a solo hike in the unforgiving terrain did not raise alarm for his close-knit Armenian family when he left their home in Belrose, on Sydney’s northern beaches, about 8pm.
But the following day when he failed to turn up for his shift at Bunnings in Narrabeen, his parents and brothers started to worry.
Panic set in when a friend of Mr Simonian led them to his car in a remote corner of the national park two days later. The friend is now deceased.
“He took us to the end of this dirt road. This friend said my brother mentioned he wanted to do this particular walk, so he drove out there,” Mr Simonian’s older brother Sasoon told The Sun-Herald. Lasting 21 days and covering seven square kilometres of dense bushland, the search that ensued was the largest in the region’s history.
“We didn’t even find a single clue,” Sasoon Simonian said.
Entrepreneur and adventurer Dick Smith spent hours hovering above the search zone in his helicopter, and encouraged experienced bushwalkers to get involved with the hunt.
Police at the time said they believed Mr Simonian had entered the national park with just a day pack and had become lost.
In the intervening four years, competing theories have developed. They will be presented to the State Coroner when Mr Simonian’s case is referred to his office next year.
One source familiar with the investigation told The Sun Herald they believed that Mr Simonian had entered the park to cultivate marijuana. “That’s what I believe, I think he’d found a spot out there for it and had been growing it.
“I don’t think he’d been bushwalking at all.”
Investigators have also looked at the possibility of suicide, which his brother says the family have discounted.
“Even though he wasn’t really himself in the day or two prior – he was a little bit timid or a bit preoccupied – we still think that he wasn’t in that mental state,” Sasoon said.
Another source close to the family said they thought suicide was unlikely.
“He just wouldn’t do that to his mother. There’s just no way,” the source said.
Investigators have also looked into the possibility of foul play, which the family consider a strong possibility. “It explains everything,” Sasoon said.
As to why anyone would want to harm his brother, the family remain unsure.
Getting lost remains the dominant theory.
Mr Simonian’s Bunnings colleague Barry Washington said at the time that the day’s weather could have impacted his plans.
The day Mr Simonian went to the mountains was a “miserable day with low cloud cover”, he said.
“He would have gone out there for an adventure, I reckon, and the fog cover’s gone too low.”
Any answer was better than none, Sasoon said.
“My parents hold guilt, it’s what they have inside them. At the beginning they were crying all the time,” he said.
“They’re very emotional still; it doesn’t get easier. People have this idea that it gets easier but with [uncertainty] you’re in this middle ground where you’re not comfortable, it’s always there.”