Andjela Djuraskovic: Son Missing Before Belgrade Storm

Prva TV host Andjela Djuraskovic described on social media, on the evening of Tuesday, August 25, the moments when her two-year-old son went missing in Belgrade as a storm gathered over the city. The search lasted about half an hour, and the boy was eventually found by strangers, before police arrived at the scene.

Djuraskovic is known to audiences as the host of Prva’s morning show. Over the past month she has also been in the spotlight over a harder piece of personal news. Serbian media reported that she is divorcing her husband Luka Mrdja after four years of marriage, after he moved out of their shared home following a serious argument. A source close to the family told media at the time that her children come first for her and that she wants to separate from her longtime partner without public conflict. Djuraskovic had previously spoken about how she and Luka met, through their mutual friend Kristina, who later served as the best woman at their wedding, and how she let the relationship develop on its own, without rushing.

The son she had with Luka, according to earlier reports about her pregnancy, is named Dusan, and the host had described the birth itself as an especially difficult period.

In the post describing what happened to her on Tuesday, Djuraskovic did not hide how frightened she had been.

Tonight, before the storm that was gathering over Belgrade, my two-year-old son disappeared, right in front of my eyes. How, I don’t know. Half an hour felt like an eternity. My despair was indescribable. And then complete strangers gathered around me, people who saw a terrified mother and simply started looking for my child. Two younger guys told me: Ma’am, don’t cry. We’re all going to spread out now and bring your child back to you. And they brought him back to me. Just before the police even arrived. They didn’t walk past a crying woman. Everyone stopped. Everyone searched for someone else’s child as if it were their own. A situation where your whole world collapses in half an hour, and then strangers hand it back to you.

This is how the night that, in her words, briefly brought her whole world down looked, according to the social media post.

The two young men who joined the search did not hesitate for a moment, according to her account. They saw a woman in a panic and immediately, together with other passersby, split up to search the surrounding streets, acting, as Djuraskovic wrote, as if they were looking for their own child. It was those two men, she said, who brought her son back to her, before police even reached the scene.

The host has not yet specified exactly where in the city the disappearance took place, or whether she was alone with the child at the time or with a family member. She also did not say whether she reported the incident to the relevant police station once the boy had already been found, given that, according to her, strangers reached her son before officers did.

What is clear from the post is that the search, however short by the clock, felt to Djuraskovic, in her own words, like an eternity, and that the willingness of complete strangers to stop and help restored her faith in people during what she called some of the hardest moments of her life. Reactions to the post came in through the night, mostly messages of support and relief that the story ended well.

For the host, this is the second difficult stretch in a short span of time. First came the divorce after four years of marriage, and now the fear for her son, which, fortunately, lasted only half an hour before the child was back in her arms.