Spanish authorities say James “Jimmy” Gracie, a 20-year-old University of Alabama student who went missing while traveling in Barcelona this week, has been found dead.
Gracie, a native of Elmhurst, Ill., disappeared Tuesday night and was last seen at a beachfront nightclub in Shoko that he had attended with friends studying abroad in the city.
Catalan police wrote on social media on Thursday that they found a body near the nightclub and identified him hours later. They provided no information about the cause of his death.
Gracie’s body was discovered Thursday in the water near the beach by a group of divers, the Associated Press reported.
Gracey was first reported missing when his mother, Therese Marren Gracey, contacted members of a Facebook group for American expats living in Barcelona to ask for their help in locating him.
“Police took his phone but he never returned to his Airbnb,” she wrote.
The family also released a statement to news outlets describing what he was wearing and urging anyone with information to come forward.
“Jimmy was a kind, responsible, and devoted son and brother,” they wrote. “It’s completely out of character for him to not be in touch with his family and friends.”
Spanish newspapers reported Thursday that local police found Gracie’s wallet in the sea. A spokesperson for the Catalan police in Barcelona told CBS News that the discovery led authorities to focus part of their search on the ocean. Divers found the man off the coast near the nightclub, but the underwater search was hampered by “extremely poor visibility,” Fox News reported.
Police reportedly found Gracie’s cell phone during an arrest of an unidentified person, but it’s unclear whether that person is considered a suspect in Gracie’s disappearance.
“We don’t know if it was lost, stolen, etc.,” Grace’s aunt Beth O’Reilly told NewsNation on Wednesday.
In a separate interview with NBC News, O’Reilly discussed how the family went to great lengths to find him.
“It’s one of those things you think wouldn’t happen to your family, but now we really want to get the word out,” she said, “put his picture out there and plead with anyone who may have seen him or bumped into him that night and was scared because they did something they shouldn’t have done, please come forward.”
