He is known as “LORK”, his artistic signature. His family found the house in a mess after his absence. Despite everything, she was qualified as a volunteer | Her mother speaks for the first time and asks for help to find him
“Have you had an argument?” the agent asked the young man’s mother. “Many times: clean up your room, do the dishes… Nothing more than normal,” she answered. Madrid, November 8, 2017. Carmen attends the police station National Police by Usera (Madrid) to file a complaint for disappearance. Her son is called David Hernando, he is 27 years old and has not been here for five years..
“The house is devastated: there are candles all over the floor, mirrors facing the wall. Clothes piled up. It’s indescribable. Can you go see it?” the woman asked the police. A patrol went a while later to the building, located in Villaverde Bajo (Madrid). “Before leaving, David was startled, out of his mind,” says Carmen, still shocked by what he experienced. The agents took note. “We can’t do much. There are many disappeared…and your child is of legal age“.
A knife
“November 8, 2017 was the last time I saw my son, although it all started the night before.” Carmen speaks for the first time with a media outlet. She does it broken by the absence and still shattered by what she lived. “David was a normal boy, with his defects, like everyone else, but normal. Nothing had ever happened to him before, nor did he take medication & mldr;”.
That night something happened to him. “I remember that she appeared in my room with an iron bar in the hands“, revives the woman. “She screamed over and over again: ‘Mom, are you okay?'” She tried to calm him down: “David, I’m fine.” The young man did not calm down. “David, what are you doing with the knife? Drop it!” I told him. I remember compulsively opened the kitchen cupboards and said: ‘you don’t know what I’ve seen there’He talked about his grandmother, who had passed away years before.
Carmen, in shock, redirected the situation as best she could. “I didn’t know what to do. I just had to think, really, that he had to drink something. That he drank, even that he took drugs, it wasn’t normal.” He suggested going to the emergency room. David said no. apparent calm. Spend the night. Carmen, restless, went to work.
Batteries and batteries
At four in the afternoon, the woman returned to her house and, when she opened the door, “she almost gave me something,” she recalls. He has not been able to get the scene out of his head: “David was not there. He had candles lit all over the house, in the rooms… The chairs were overturned, the drawers open; all electrical appliances with batteries removedclothes piled up, cutlery lying around and mirrors upside down, looking at the wall“.
His room, which days before was full of photos, of posters, was empty: “I had put it in bags and they were in the living room.”
At four-odd in the afternoon, the boy showed up. “Where did you come from David?” “From looking for you!” he replied. “But what happened here?” “I’ve done the cleaning. I’m going to keep the whole floor.” Again, his voice had changed, “he was agitated.” Carmen called her sister, David’s aunt.
The woman entered the house. Again, apparent calm, just a few seconds. “I’m going to buy Chinese for a moment,” the young man told his aunt. “Are you going to be late?”, “No, no, I’ll come now”. He didn’t come back.
a burned photo
Minutes turned into hours. She didn’t come back. “He left with what he was wearing, he had his wallet, little money and his documentation.” It didn’t take long for them to go to the police. “We went that same night to file a complaint,” recalls Carmen, “nothing was normal.”
He recounted what he experienced. “The house did not burn down by a miracle. He burned a lamp on me, he burned a photo of my parents in the living room. Outbreak, paranoia or call it ‘x’, I don’t know, but something was clearly not right.”
David Hernando Cortes. 26 years. He is 1.75 m tall, slim build. Two tattoos, on the right leg and arm. In one he says: “Made in Madriz”, the other is a graffiti artist’s “takeo” (signature). Passionate about street art, he is known as “LORK”. The agents completed the file. “If we know something, we’ll let you know…” they said.
“Aren’t they going to see the house? It’s shocking.” After Carmen’s insistence, the agents came. “They didn’t touch anything”, they didn’t take his cell phone, maybe a password, or his computer. “I can’t say if they have searched for my son or not,” she lamented, “but David is not here today.”
Carmen went to the Villaverde police station (Madrid), “at first I filed the complaint in Usera, and then it went there. They told me:you know how many disappearances there are in this district every day?”. He was young, “he left on his own feet.” The investigation became entrenched.
The protocol for the search for disappeared persons of the Ministry of the Interior establishes that involuntary disappearances include those people who, even if they leave of their own free will, have mental health problems. Problems with cognitive impairment, mental disorders, psychotic break, neurodegenerative diseases or people with disabilities.
The search for the disappeared person is generated for reasons of their own safety or at the request of relatives or close friends, and for social interest.
family investigation
Soup kitchens, hostels, hospitals, “we called all the places we could think of.” They drew all the scenes: “that he was disoriented, that he had had an accident…”. They tried to contact their friends, acquaintances, beat without rest. Nothing helped.
“They told us that it was in a squat in Fuenlabrada, we went without hesitation”, recalls Carmen
“Look, a colleague told me that he is in a squat in Fuenlabrada…” a friend of David told them. “We went without hesitation. In that area there were many squats, but just seeing the people there… you couldn’t even get close to the portal“, relives Carmen. Shacks, lots, they looked at everything. “It was impossible. It was looking for a needle in a haystack.”
“He’s gone,” laments Carmen. “I don’t know the cause.” She fights since then to get back together, she waits for it, “I know that something happened to him, because of how my house was, because of how he was and because there was no reason to disappear. I have spoken with doctors afterwards and they all indicate that it has all the earmarks of a psychotic break, “she laments.
There isn’t a day that I don’t think about him. “He always had the hood, a backpack and spray cans,” recalls his mother. “I always told him: but David… I didn’t like that he did it,” she says. “I didn’t like it at all, because he was good at painting, but he wanted me to take advantage of it, to channel it in another way.”
Today I would give anything to see a new graffiti, recently, that bears his signature. Something that would tell her it was okay, something that would lead her to him.
A lover of music and cinema, most of his friends are from Azuqueca (Guadalajara) where he grew up. Many of them plastered Madrid (Fuenlabrada, Aluche…) with his photo when they learned of his disappearance.
They have been waiting for him, as Carmen has done, for five years. She trusts the reunion: “he liked Barcelona, the United States… but well, maybe he’s in Chinchón”, she visualizes. “Maybe it’s a shield to cope with it, maybe, but I think my son is fine and that he will show up one day to introduce me to my grandson.
He does not want reproaches, not even explanations. “If anyone knows something, let him help us… Or himself… he has the right to decide about his life. I just want to know that he’s okay.”