A 35-year-old B.C. man previously reported missing with his three-year-old son by the Port Alberni RCMP said in an Instagram post on Friday that he and his son were not missing, calling reports of their disappearance “fake news.”
Law enforcement appealed to the public for help locating Jan Stelmasyzk and his son Matt Bartnik on Thursday, after family members came forward to say that they had not heard from the pair in four days.
The father and son were believed to be camping in the Victoria area and were communicating with family through social media posts, since Stelmasyzk did “not have cell phone communication,” Port Alberni RCMP said Thursday.
Family members grew concerned when Stelmasyzk’s Instagram account went silent for four days.
But on Friday, Stelmasyzk posted a photo of two children in a stroller eating pizza with a caption saying, “OMG!!! I just woke up to realize me and my son are ‘missing.’ That ‘some family members’ are ‘concerned’ about where we are and that I haven’t posted anything on social media for a couple of days.”
He added the hashtags #fakenews and #backtoposting.
The location for the Instagram post is Arco, Italy, a tiny town in Trentino-Alto Adige, a region in northern Italy that borders Austria and Switzerland.
It is unclear if Stelmasyzk and Bartnik are in Italy or if the location is a joke.
Port Alberni RCMP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
