A man who dressed up as missing child Madeleine McCann for Halloween has faced swift backlash online after he posted a picture of himself in his ‘costume’ to Twitter.
Daniel Gearie, 25, wore an Everton shirt and a blonde wig and posted the picture alongside an image of Maddie.
He captioned the shot “You’ve taken it too far Daniel”.
The now-deleted Twitter post.
If dressing up as Maddie wasn’t bad enough, he then Tweeted: “and before you say “this is sick” etc I know it is but I’m not the one who left a child unattended in a Portuguese hotel”.
However, the backlash was so severe with other users calling him “vile” and “sick”, Gearie deleted the posts and turned his Twitter page to private. He also issued the following apology:
A spokesperson for Kate and Gerry McCann gave a statement about Gearie’s stunt to the MailOnline. It reads:
“Kate and Gerry have never dignified this sort of offensive and cretinous behaviour with any sort of comment at all and they are not going to start now. It is right the material has been deleted.”
They’re said to be targeted by 150 vile tweets every day.
Kate and Gerry McCann in 2012.
It’s been a decade since Maddie disappeared from an apartment in Praia da Luz in Portugal. Her parents Kate and Gerry recently gave a devastating interview to the BBC, to mark the anniversary.
In the past ten years, there have been many theories and false leads in the search for Madeleine but what actually happened to the little girl still remains a mystery.
Speaking to the BBC’s Fiona Bruce, the McCanns relive the agony of losing Madeleine and how they try to get by.
Heartbreakingly, Kate says she still buys birthday and Christmas presents for Madeleine.
“I obviously have to think about what age she is and something that, whenever we find her, will still be appropriate. so there’s a lot of thought goes into it.
“But I couldn’t not, you know; she’s still our daughter, she’ll always be our daughter.”
