A Black American man, Jeremy Collins, who went missing five days ago in Barcelona, was found, thanks in part to TikTok. 

It all began when, on Sept. 23, a woman who referred to herself as Collier’s sister, posted a video on TikTok asking users for help to find him after he was unresponsive to her calls for a few days. She also mentioned that he hadn’t reached out in time for their mother’s birthday, which sounded the alarm that something was wrong. 

After a few days of searching, she provided an update that he’d been found on Sept. 26. 

“The only information I have is that my brother and dad and other family members who are (in Barcelona) confirmed that he is alive and he's safe,” she stated. 

Early on in the search, a GoFundMe page was created by Lauryn Day, presumably Collier’s sister, to help fund the efforts. Donations reached more than $2k in less than a week. 

Collier’s sister credited the digital community for playing a pivotal role in finding him and thanked the viewers for their concern and care. Collectively, the videos documenting the search efforts racked up more than 1M views. 

“(Jeremy) doesn't have his phone,” she stated. “He has no idea that there were hundreds of thousands of people around the world looking for him. And he has no idea how many prayers and how much love and how much outpouring of support that he has. It's been overwhelming for me. I've never had this many notifications on my phone, so I'm sure it will be overwhelming for him. And we're just trying to navigate the best way through that over the next few days.” 

She mentioned initially leaning on local authorities to lead the search, but through her own connections in law enforcement, she leveraged those ties and leaned on the internet to get answers. 

“I have come to TikTok to see if the TikTok detectives and anybody who follows cases like this can just try to help us find him,” she said. “I work in the criminal justice system, and unfortunately, I see that people just don't take missing adult cases seriously.” 

Capital B news notes that approximately 190,000 Black people were reported missing in the U.S. in 2024, representing about 36% of all missing persons cases, though Black people make up only 13% of the U.S. population.