Missing since 2016
Ethiopian-born Nazrawi, 20, went missing from his Hobart unit on October 9, 2016. His mum Hirut, a social worker, is heartbroken.
“I don’t want to count the days that my son Nazrawi has been gone,” says Hirut. “I live with a heavy pain in my chest, and it breaks my heart seeing my kids in pain, too. His brothers Promise and Selam, sister Sofinite, and stepdad Darron miss him desperately.
“We want to know what happened to him – without answers we’re living in limbo. I’m prepared for any sort of closure, even if he’s in a ditch, as much as it scares me to think this way. We came to Australia as refugees from Ethiopia 13 years ago. Naz grew into an amazing artist and two months before he vanished, he spoke of wanting to move to Melbourne, to get more opportunities with his paintings.
“On the night Naz disappeared from his unit, there is footage of him going in and out of his building all night. At 7.17am, he’d cleared out everything. A shopping centre camera later caught him trying to buy clothes, but he had no money.
“Naz would never leave me and prior to his accident in 2014 [he stepped in front of a car], he would ring and ask where I was all the time. Afterwards, he started having blackouts, but the medications he was given made him slow and unable to create art, so he stopped taking them.
“It makes me shake telling his story.”