Three people - one man and two women - were found dead in an overturned vehicle on the road between the „Blace” border crossing and Skopje. The car, a „Mercedes” with German plates, was found flipped over on Sunday night at 22:35, after police officers came to the scene on a report filed with SVR Skopje.

Their deaths were confirmed by a doctor from the Emergency Medical Service. According to the Interior Ministry, the three were Kosovo nationals who had earlier been reported missing. That same day, at 13:40, a relative told the Bit Pazar police station they had lost all contact with them - the last time they were heard from was on 18 July around 22:15, when they were at Skopje airport.

So for more than a full day, the families were looking for three missing people - through the media, through social networks, through appeals to the public - while the three lay the whole time in an overturned car on one of the busiest exit routes out of the country. The road toward „Blace” is no forgotten village lane. Thousands of travellers pass along it every day, heading to Kosovo and back.

The question that remains isn't who saw them last, but how an overturned vehicle on a main road stays unnoticed for that long. When did a patrol last pass the car? Is there any lighting on that stretch? Those are questions the investigation - which the Interior Ministry says is under way - has to answer.

Until then, what's left is three names and one family that waited for help in the wrong place. Clearing up the circumstances - where the vehicle went off, why, and how much time passed before it was found - is the institutions' job, not that of relatives who combed social media day and night.