Photo by Dusty Smith – Twitter.com/DustyAllDayLong, some rights reserved
Local man Fred Frost had the shock of his life when he typed the name of his long-lost brother into his sat nav and the device gave him exact directions to where his sibling was living, writes Crispin Fisher.
Fred told The News Grind: “I was a bit bored sat in the car waiting for my wife to come out of the hairdressers so I decided to put in random words to see how the sat nav would respond.
“After exhausting all the silly place names I challenged it to locate my brother. I typed in his full name and – hey presto – an address popped up as quick as a flash”
After 30 minutes of driving Fred arrived at a large house in the nearby countryside. When he rang the bell he was greeted at the door by the brother he had not seen for nearly 50 years.
His brother Terry said: “I was gobsmacked when I opened the door and saw Fred standing there.
“At first I thought the missus had bought a mirror on ebay, but when my reflection starting talking I couldn’t believe it.”
The two brothers lost contact after a major row which ended with Terry storming out of the family home never to return.
After using the sat nav to find his brother Fred tried to use the device to track down other missing people and animals.
He said: “Every time I put Osama Bin Laden’s name in the device it kept giving the same Abbottabad address but when I contacted the authorities they refused to believe me.”
Two weeks later the Americans killed the Al Qaeda leader after receiving ‘new intelligence’ as to his whereabouts.
Fred has now setup his own business tracing missing pets and even missing people on the behalf of law enforcement agencies.
His only failure came when officials in Ireland contacted Fred to see if he could help them locate missing racehorse Shergar.
Fred said: “I found the Shergar case particularly frustrating because I was able to pinpoint exactly where he should have been but when officials visited the spot there was no sign Shergar. And staff at the nearby dog food factory claimed they had not seen any horses in the area for years.”
