‘He looked dead’

By Ed Merrison
STUMBLING into a boy curled up in bushland behind her house turned Belgrave resident Karen Shiel’s life into temporary chaos.
The boy turned out to be missing Narre Warren schoolboy Glenn Birtwistle and Ms Shiel’s shock at finding him intensified as she skyrocketed to hero status after claims surfaced that Glenn would not have survived the night.
The morning after she found him, Ms Shiel had a media crew on her doorstep at home and another one awaiting her arrival at Carwatha College in Noble Park, where she works as a teacher.
Glenn had been the subject of an extensive police hunt and intense media speculation since disappearing on the morning of Wednesday, July 26.
Ms Shiel said he was rolled up in a ball and totally still when she spotted him at about 5pm on Sunday, 6 August while walking her dog in the bushland of Selby Conservation Reserve, about 150 metres from her house.
The sight, glimpsed at almost the same moment by another Belgrave man who has eluded the media spotlight, triggered off some frightening thoughts.
“Of course you think the worst,” Ms Shiel said.
“You don’t know what to think and that’s a bit scary. I thought he might have been dead,” she said.
When they roused the stranger he was frail and disoriented. He could not stand and would not answer questions.
Ms Shiel ran back to her house and dialled 000, leaving the other man to comfort Glenn.
Though she had vaguely followed the media saga of the disappeared schoolboy, neither she nor the police initially realised they had become the latest chapter in a missing person mystery that had been gripping Melbourne.
It was not until Ms Shiel turned on the 7 o’clock news that the penny dropped.
“I had really made no connection whatsoever. I was amazed. I was just sitting there thinking ‘Oh my God, it’s the same person’,” she said.
If Ms Shiel got a shock that evening, what happened the next day was perhaps more intense.
“I certainly didn’t predict the media. It was just crazy. I was still feeling shaky and I hadn’t slept that night because I kept reliving the image,” she said.
Ms Shiel called the episode “just a one day thing” but for the day it lasted the media took her life by storm and left her bemused at her newly acquired hero status.
“It’s just been a really revealing experience of how the media works,” Ms Shiel said, adding she was embarrassed that all the attention and landed upon her and not the other man who was present when Glenn was discovered.
“It was great having that other fellow here, having someone to talk to, to problem solve with.
“You don’t immediately know what to do and he was just as crucial,” she said.
Ms Shiel said she was extremely happy for Glenn’s family who had indicated that they would like to meet up in the future.
In the meantime, she did not wish to speculate on the mystery of Glenn’s disappearance and survival, though various ‘what ifs’ inevitably arise.
“It was just amazing I was there at that time and the hospital said he wouldn’t have survived the night. What if I went for a walk the next morning?” she said.
It was a weird episode, she said, and though the attention has died down it will live with Ms Shiel for a long time.
“Anything like that is a confronting and out of the ordinary experience,” she said.
“You don’t know until you’re in that situation how it will affect you.”