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22 December 2023
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Technology: A stranger with a drone helped Haylee to lay her brother to rest, Australia
For almost two years Haylee O’Connell and her family were in limbo, not knowing where her brother Corey was, or even if he was alive.Even during the most everyday moments, the lack of answers was always with them. “It would be like, 'Corey loved that song', or 'No, Corey loves that song' ... a little battle that you have is where you place them in your life, whether it’s past or present,” O’Connell said. If it wasn’t for the assistance of drone images and an eagle-eyed person with some spare time browsing the internet, Corey's family would not have been able to lay him to rest, as they finally did in September.
Corey O’Connell’s disappearance
Haylee reported her 26-year-old brother missing to police in late June of 2021, after not hearing from him for a while and realising he had not been active on his social media accounts, as he usually was.
She said he had been staying between their mother's place, in the south-west of Western Australia and their cousin's house in a nearby town.
Haylee, who said her brother had struggled with his mental health, expected police would do a welfare check and let her know he was fine. However, they were unable to find him and weeks later the car he had been driving was found a short distance into bushland on the side of Brockman Highway, outside of Nannup, having run out of fuel. O'Connell was likely going between his mother's and his cousin's at the time.
Police investigators concluded that he was last seen on 24 June walking along the road near which his car was found.
Haylee said her brother's fragile state of mind, and comments from some of the people who knew him, initially led police and family members to think there was a possibility he was "living off the grid" and may not have wanted to be found.
However, after none of his friends or family had heard from him for about six months and no evidence was found to suggest he was "laying low", they had a realisation that this may not have been the case.
The search for Corey O'Connell
"The police did their search six months after I had reported Corey missing" but came up empty-handed, Haylee said. Following this, she was looking for other ways to find some answers, she said.
In the second half of 2022, with the help of K9 Trackers Perth, a private provider of trained search and rescue dogs, Haylee coordinated a large-scale search of the bushland near where Corey's car had been located. The family was supported by community members, many of whom didn't know Corey but wanted to assist.
"There were four large searches that we did but in between me and my partner, me and my brother, me and some friends, we would just go do our own little walks, I just felt the need to do something," Haylee said.
The bush in the area was dense and searching through it was physically taxing.
The search for Corey goes high-tech
After researching different search techniques, Haylee began speaking with a drone operator based in Canberra, who offered his services free of charge.
Daniel Wood's business, Working Drones Australia, carries out a variety of aerial mapping and data collection operations, but Wood has a background in criminology and has always been interested in how technology can be used to enhance the search for missing people.
Wood travelled to WA in April of 2023 and, across four days, worked in a grid-like pattern, capturing hi-resolution aerial photographs of a 22-square-km area around the site where O'Connell's car was found.
While the drone carried out its tasks autonomously, a lot of planning and groundwork was also required for the photogrammetry process, whereby overlapping images are taken and used to create a highly detailed depiction of a space.
The project involved setting up over 20 take-off and landing sites within dense bushland. Ongoing monitoring and responding to conditions such as wind speed as well as consideration of image quality, was also required.
A total of 45 000 images of the search area were taken and Wood created a website so they would be accessible worldwide.
"Users could zoom into significant detail, scan through the images on any device and then they had the ability to mark the images as interesting or not interesting," he said.
One small find in a big digital search
Just a couple of weeks after Wood's trip to WA, Haylee shared the site on the Facebook page she'd set up as part of her search for her brother. At that stage, not all of the images had been loaded onto the site as they were being added in batches due to the time it took to process and upload them. People could choose to work their own way through images or focus on suggested images on a section of the site labelled 'random images'.
"It basically surfaced up the least viewed images, so if any of the images hadn't been clicked on, they were showing first," Wood said. "That was a way that we could be sure all of the images were getting viewed."
Within about four hours of publishing her Facebook post, Haylee was notified that someone had spotted something they thought was worth flagging in one of the random images. Someone had spotted some bones but pointed out that they may just be kangaroo bones, which made sense to Haylee because she'd come across plenty of those on her searches.
She took a look at the photo and, after showing it to her contact at K9 Trackers Perth, thought it would be best to pass on the GPS coordinates to the police.
Haylee said the image was not "gruesome" in any way, and said she had not really thought much would come of it. However, the bones police found at those coordinates, around 400 metres from where Corey O'Connell's car had been located, were later confirmed to be his remains. Haylee said maps of the searches carried out on foot showed the search party had come within 10 metres of where his remains were ultimately found.
Haylee said she was grateful that this was how her brother had been found, as it may have been less traumatic than if she or anyone else had come across his remains in person. She said the person who had spotted the bones in the photo and alerted her didn't know her or Corey, as far as she knew but she emailed him to let him know how helpful he'd been.
"He said he spent a few hours searching through the random images and just said that he loves the bush and was happy to help," she said.
Drone tech in searches for missing persons
While Wood has been involved in searches for people before, he said O'Connell's was his first large-scale search of this type. He said police had started to use drone technology in search operations but that mostly involved police watching a screen with a real-time video feed transmitted by a drone-mounted camera.
He said that, while the technology was expensive and required a lot more time and effort than most people thought, drones could definitely play a bigger role in search operations in the future.
Haylee said that, while not all missing persons’ cases would involve such a relatively small search area to scan, she believed there were other situations in which drones could assist. "We were fortunate enough to have a last known location and Corey wandering into the bush was a higher possibility, where you have some missing family members where their last known location was walking out the door of their house," she said.
"I definitely think the drone is a really good option because it also gives families something to do to help look for them because for me, sitting and doing nothing wasn't really an option," she said.
Aerial images in a search for another Western Australian man who has not been seen since June have now been added to the website Wood created to host the images taken in search of O'Connell.
Not knowing had been exhausting
Haylee said that, if the drone imagery had not helped in locating her brother, she would have continued searching until he had been found. "It's really exhausting having so much hope and in not having the answer," she said.
Haylee said finding Corey's remains had given her conflicting feelings. "We are absolutely devastated that Corey is no longer here, but also relieved that we have him and we don't have to spend the rest of our lives looking for him," she said.
Haylee shared an update on the Facebook page set up to find Corey when she and her other brother Kyle picked up their brother's ashes. She said there "was an overwhelming feeling of having the three of us together in a sense."
"We also couldn’t stop thinking about all the people involved for us to get to that very moment. Words cannot even begin to describe how grateful we are for everyone that helped us get Corey to where he belongs."
A memorial was held for O'Connell on what would have been his 28th birthday at the end of September.
Source: SBS News, Australia
Corey O’Connell’s disappearance
Haylee reported her 26-year-old brother missing to police in late June of 2021, after not hearing from him for a while and realising he had not been active on his social media accounts, as he usually was.
She said he had been staying between their mother's place, in the south-west of Western Australia and their cousin's house in a nearby town.
Haylee, who said her brother had struggled with his mental health, expected police would do a welfare check and let her know he was fine. However, they were unable to find him and weeks later the car he had been driving was found a short distance into bushland on the side of Brockman Highway, outside of Nannup, having run out of fuel. O'Connell was likely going between his mother's and his cousin's at the time.
Police investigators concluded that he was last seen on 24 June walking along the road near which his car was found.
Haylee said her brother's fragile state of mind, and comments from some of the people who knew him, initially led police and family members to think there was a possibility he was "living off the grid" and may not have wanted to be found.
However, after none of his friends or family had heard from him for about six months and no evidence was found to suggest he was "laying low", they had a realisation that this may not have been the case.
The search for Corey O'Connell
"The police did their search six months after I had reported Corey missing" but came up empty-handed, Haylee said. Following this, she was looking for other ways to find some answers, she said.
In the second half of 2022, with the help of K9 Trackers Perth, a private provider of trained search and rescue dogs, Haylee coordinated a large-scale search of the bushland near where Corey's car had been located. The family was supported by community members, many of whom didn't know Corey but wanted to assist.
"There were four large searches that we did but in between me and my partner, me and my brother, me and some friends, we would just go do our own little walks, I just felt the need to do something," Haylee said.
The bush in the area was dense and searching through it was physically taxing.
The search for Corey goes high-tech
After researching different search techniques, Haylee began speaking with a drone operator based in Canberra, who offered his services free of charge.
Daniel Wood's business, Working Drones Australia, carries out a variety of aerial mapping and data collection operations, but Wood has a background in criminology and has always been interested in how technology can be used to enhance the search for missing people.
Wood travelled to WA in April of 2023 and, across four days, worked in a grid-like pattern, capturing hi-resolution aerial photographs of a 22-square-km area around the site where O'Connell's car was found.
While the drone carried out its tasks autonomously, a lot of planning and groundwork was also required for the photogrammetry process, whereby overlapping images are taken and used to create a highly detailed depiction of a space.
The project involved setting up over 20 take-off and landing sites within dense bushland. Ongoing monitoring and responding to conditions such as wind speed as well as consideration of image quality, was also required.
A total of 45 000 images of the search area were taken and Wood created a website so they would be accessible worldwide.
"Users could zoom into significant detail, scan through the images on any device and then they had the ability to mark the images as interesting or not interesting," he said.
One small find in a big digital search
Just a couple of weeks after Wood's trip to WA, Haylee shared the site on the Facebook page she'd set up as part of her search for her brother. At that stage, not all of the images had been loaded onto the site as they were being added in batches due to the time it took to process and upload them. People could choose to work their own way through images or focus on suggested images on a section of the site labelled 'random images'.
"It basically surfaced up the least viewed images, so if any of the images hadn't been clicked on, they were showing first," Wood said. "That was a way that we could be sure all of the images were getting viewed."
Within about four hours of publishing her Facebook post, Haylee was notified that someone had spotted something they thought was worth flagging in one of the random images. Someone had spotted some bones but pointed out that they may just be kangaroo bones, which made sense to Haylee because she'd come across plenty of those on her searches.
She took a look at the photo and, after showing it to her contact at K9 Trackers Perth, thought it would be best to pass on the GPS coordinates to the police.
Haylee said the image was not "gruesome" in any way, and said she had not really thought much would come of it. However, the bones police found at those coordinates, around 400 metres from where Corey O'Connell's car had been located, were later confirmed to be his remains. Haylee said maps of the searches carried out on foot showed the search party had come within 10 metres of where his remains were ultimately found.
Haylee said she was grateful that this was how her brother had been found, as it may have been less traumatic than if she or anyone else had come across his remains in person. She said the person who had spotted the bones in the photo and alerted her didn't know her or Corey, as far as she knew but she emailed him to let him know how helpful he'd been.
"He said he spent a few hours searching through the random images and just said that he loves the bush and was happy to help," she said.
Drone tech in searches for missing persons
While Wood has been involved in searches for people before, he said O'Connell's was his first large-scale search of this type. He said police had started to use drone technology in search operations but that mostly involved police watching a screen with a real-time video feed transmitted by a drone-mounted camera.
He said that, while the technology was expensive and required a lot more time and effort than most people thought, drones could definitely play a bigger role in search operations in the future.
Haylee said that, while not all missing persons’ cases would involve such a relatively small search area to scan, she believed there were other situations in which drones could assist. "We were fortunate enough to have a last known location and Corey wandering into the bush was a higher possibility, where you have some missing family members where their last known location was walking out the door of their house," she said.
"I definitely think the drone is a really good option because it also gives families something to do to help look for them because for me, sitting and doing nothing wasn't really an option," she said.
Aerial images in a search for another Western Australian man who has not been seen since June have now been added to the website Wood created to host the images taken in search of O'Connell.
Not knowing had been exhausting
Haylee said that, if the drone imagery had not helped in locating her brother, she would have continued searching until he had been found. "It's really exhausting having so much hope and in not having the answer," she said.
Haylee said finding Corey's remains had given her conflicting feelings. "We are absolutely devastated that Corey is no longer here, but also relieved that we have him and we don't have to spend the rest of our lives looking for him," she said.
Haylee shared an update on the Facebook page set up to find Corey when she and her other brother Kyle picked up their brother's ashes. She said there "was an overwhelming feeling of having the three of us together in a sense."
"We also couldn’t stop thinking about all the people involved for us to get to that very moment. Words cannot even begin to describe how grateful we are for everyone that helped us get Corey to where he belongs."
A memorial was held for O'Connell on what would have been his 28th birthday at the end of September.
Source: SBS News, Australia
