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A Californian father has been missing for nearly two weeks after he got into a car accident in the middle of the night and then mysteriously vanished.
William Orellana, 34, from Upland, San Bernardino County, has been nowhere to be seen ever since he crashed into a pole in Riverside on July 20, the Upland Police Department said.
“We’re devastated. We just want to know if he is okay,” said Kacey Silvas, his girlfriend, after days of posting flyers around the area, checking hospitals, and continuing to search for the missing man.
The father of three has been reported as a “critical missing” person and has not been seen or heard from since the day of the crash, the police added.
They said he was last seen in the area of Barton and Santa Inez in the city of Riverside following the traffic collision.
The car, a white Chrysler 300, had crashed into a pole, but not hard enough to deploy the airbags, according to a Missing People in America missing person’s poster. Silvas received a missed call from him at 3.52am on July 31, the poster said.
The car was found crashed, but with no one inside, all that was left were personal belongings, such as his cell phone and his work uniform, said Ryan Rails, public information officer for Riverside Police, to USA Today.
After the initial crash, the car became a hazard, causing someone else to plow into the vehicle that was partly on the road later that morning.
“We towed the car because it was blocking the roadway. It was a hazard,” Railsback said Thursday. “We never made contact with him. He wasn’t in the car at the time of the collision. And so it was just an empty car that somebody else hit.”
The other driver collided with Orellana’s car at around 5am, KABCreported, but the driver said he did not see anyone inside the car.
While his disappearance has still been left unexplained, the Upland Police Department has said that there is no indication of foul play.
Silvas, his girlfriend of the past four years, told ABC that his disappearance is “devastating,” adding that they desperately want him home because he has children, “and those kids need him.”
“We don’t know if he hit his head on the steering wheel. We don’t know if he lost consciousness, he doesn’t know who he is. We don’t know at this point,” Silvas said. “I don’t know how people can just vanish.”
Silvas added that she does not understand why Orellana would be in the Riverside area, as he has no friends or family there.
“The area that he was at was so isolated. We don’t know how his car got there,” she said. “We’re devastated. We just want to know if he is OK.”
His mother, Cyntia Hernandez, said she usually speaks to her son multiple times a day.
“It’s the hardest thing a mother could go through,” she told CBS. “Especially when you have such a close relationship. It’s been hard.”
Orellana is described as around five feet seven inches tall, with a thin build and distinctive tattoos on his neck and head.
Silvas added to CBSthat his tattoos are not gang-related, but they are all “religious.”
If anyone sees Orellana, authorities are asking them to contact the Upland Police Department at (909) 946-7624
