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Wrong GPS Route Sends Worker 116 Kilometers Away Before Safe Return

Police attribute the hours-long search to a navigation input error compounded by a dead phone battery.

Overview

  • The 58-year-old left a rail construction site in the Oberpfalz to refuel nine kilometers away at Bahnhof Neukirchen near Sulzbach-Rosenberg.
  • A destination mix-up in his navigation device sent him instead to Neukirchen beim Heiligen Blut, roughly 116 kilometers into the Bavarian Forest.
  • Colleagues, unable to reach him and aware of his diabetes, halted work and reported him missing after he failed to return.
  • Police used mobile-phone localization to identify a last signal near Bad Kötzting while coworkers searched local routes.
  • About five hours after departing, he returned healthy to the site, and police said the case involved no crime as his phone battery had discharged.