Search for missing Irish nurse in Glasgow continues

Scottish police are continuing to search for an Irish student who hasn’t been seen since the weekend when she told friends in a Glasgow nightclub that she was going to the toilet.

Karen Buckley (24), a nurse from Co Cork, had been with friends at the Sanctuary Nightclub on Dumbarton Road in Glasgow on Saturday night.

But at about 1am on Sunday, she told friends that she was going to the toilet but she did not return and never collected her jacket from the nightclub cloakroom.

Her concerned parents, John and Marion, travelled from their family farm in Glynn, Mourneabbey near Mallow, to Glasgow on Monday where they met police officers leading the search for their daughter.

The youngest of the couple’s four children, Karen has three older brothers, Kieran, Damian and Brendan.

She moved to Glasgow in January after working for a year in Essex.

Police have examined CCTV footage from the nightclub and have identified Ms Buckley, who can been seen outside the nightclub talking to a man.

She is then seen walking westwards along Dumbarton Road, away from the city centre and in the opposite direction from where she rents accommodation with three friends on Hill Street.

Broadening the search

Searches began in the areas where Ms Buckley was last seen, including a park, bushes and an area around the river Kelvin. The search is expected to broaden out in the coming days.

A nurse, Ms Buckley is studying occupational therapy at Glasgow Caledonian University and friends raised the alarm after she failed to return home from the night out.

Police are keen to speak to the man that Ms Buckley spoke with outside the nightclub. He is described as being of stocky build and was dressed in a white shirt and dark trousers.

Insp Gavin Smith of Glasgow City Police said Ms Buckley's friends reported her missing on Sunday as they felt her behaviour in not returning home was out of character.

Text or phone

“Her friends say she would always contact them by text or phone to let them know where she was and she doesn’t appear to have contacted anyone,” he said.

“We are interested in speaking to anyone who may have seen Karen in the early hours of Sunday morning in the west end of Glasgow in order to help with our inquiries to locate her.”

Insp Smith said that Ms Buckley had been drinking alcohol with her friends but they told police that she was not drunk.

Meanwhile back in Mourneabbey, local parish priest Fr Joe O’Keeffe said that the news had only just begun to break in the parish but everyone was hoping it would all end well.

“The news only started to circulate this afternoon but naturally everyone is hoping for a positive rather than a negative outcome as it’s a very worrying time for her family.

"All we can do is keep Karen and her family in our thoughts and in our prayers and hope that she is found safe and well as quickly as possible," Fr O'Keeffe told The Irish Times.

Ms Buckley is described as between 155cm-160cm in height with dark hair and brown eyes.

On the night she disappeared she was wearing an all-in-one black jumpsuit with red high heels.