20-year-old reported missing only to find that he was ‘just having sex’

Dale Rowlinson-Bates, 20, with this mother Julie.
A young British man was reported missing New Year's Day, but he got lucky.

It turns out Dale Rowlinson-Bates, 20, was simply shacking up with a newfound lady friend when he failed to contact his friends and family for a couple days, the Telegraph reported.

Rowlinson-Bates phoned his mother, 44-year-old Julie Rowlinson-Bates, at about 8:30 p.m. New Year's Eve, she told police. According to the Birmingham Mail, he also told his mother that his phone battery was about to run out.

His mother became "frantic" when she hadn't heard from him on New Year's Day. She checked in with his friends, who said they had last seen him at around 5:30 a.m. after a night of partying at the Q Club in Birmingham, U.K. After not hearing from her son for 24 hours, the worried mother then contacted police and made a Facebook page dedicated to finding her son.

Rowlinson-Bates contacted his older brother at around 4 p.m. on January 2, and the 50-officer manhunt was called off.

"He had been staying in Birmingham with a girl," Julie Rowlinson-Bates said of her son, adding that, "He obviously spent a day or so with the girl and then came home."

She noted that her son's lack of communication was "totally out of character."

"Dale is a bit of a mummy's boy," a friend told the Mirror, "and always rings his mum wherever he might be every day. His phone died on New Year's Eve … but because he'd rang his mum earlier in the night he assumed she knew he was okay."

The mother expressed her gratitude towards police for their efforts in the investigation. When she learned her son was safe, she said, she ""felt relieved and just broke down and hugged him and said please do not ever do this to me again."

Source- HuffPost