Lars Joachim Mittank (2013) — Credit: BKA Germany/ Federal Criminal Police Office (Germany) · Public domain
Lars Joachim Mittank, born 9 February 1986 in Berlin, Germany, was a 28-year-old German man who disappeared on 8 July 2014 near Varna Airport in Varna, Bulgaria. He grew up in Itzehoe, Schleswig-Holstein, where he lived his entire life, worked at a power plant, and had a girlfriend and a close circle of friends. His family and friends described him as a normal person with no reported history of mental illness.
On 30 June 2014, Mittank travelled with five friends to the Golden Sands resort outside Varna, his first trip abroad. According to his friends, the early part of the holiday was uneventful, though one companion noted that he ate very little. On 6 July 2014, the day before the group's planned departure, Mittank argued with other German nationals at a bar over football, then separated from his friends and was absent overnight. He returned to the resort the next morning saying four men hired by the group had beaten him, leaving him with an injured jaw and a ruptured eardrum. A doctor advised him not to fly and prescribed the antibiotic Cefprozil. At his urging, his friends flew home on 7 July.
Mittank then checked into the Hotel Color Varna near the airport. A day after his friends departed, he began behaving anxiously. He telephoned his mother, Sandra Mittank, saying in a whisper that people were trying to kill or rob him and asking her to cancel his credit cards. Hotel security cameras recorded him pacing hallways, looking out of windows, and hiding in an elevator. He briefly left the hotel around 1:00 a.m. and returned about an hour later. The following morning he again called his mother, saying his pursuers were getting closer.
On 8 July 2014, Mittank went to Varna Airport, hoping to fly home. He consulted the airport doctor, Kosta Kostov, who later described his manner as nervous and erratic and said he had told Mittank he was fit to travel. When a construction worker entered the office during airport renovations, Mittank reportedly began to tremble, shouted that he did not want to die there, and fled, leaving behind his wallet, mobile phone, passport, and other luggage. Security footage captured him running from the terminal, climbing a fence, crossing a meadow, and heading toward an adjacent forest, his last confirmed whereabouts.
No consensus exists on what caused Mittank's behaviour. His mother and some doctors suspected a rare psychotic side effect of Cefprozil, though Kostov stated that Mittank never filled or took the prescription. An undiagnosed mental illness has also been discussed. After police could not determine his fate, Sandra Mittank hired a private investigator, Andreas Gutig, who found no matching hospital records. Reported sightings in Bulgaria and elsewhere, including a 2019 account from a German truck driver, remain unconfirmed. The widely circulated airport footage led to Mittank being called 'the most famous missing person on YouTube', and the case remains unsolved.
