It started around 9 a.m. on Wednesday and ended late in the afternoon. Since then, there has been no communication at this stage on the possible results of this crucial “situation” which brought together the family, neighbors and witnesses, almost nine months after the start of the investigation.
Since the mystery of the disappearance of little Emile, two and a half years old, remains unsolved on Thursday. In total, 17 people were summoned by the courts to reconstruct the moment when the boy was last seen in the hamlet of Haut-Vernet (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence), on July 8.
Haut-Vernet completely prohibited from overflight
To ensure that this new act of investigation would take place peacefully, access to the hamlet had been blocked since 8 a.m. Wednesday and remained so until 8 a.m. Friday. Haut-Vernet, located between Digne-les-Bains and Gap, was also completely prohibited from flying on Thursday, with drones mobilized to secure the site. “The objective of the scenario is to retrace chronologically the evening of July 8 and to be able to confirm or deny the elements” collected by the investigators, explained Pierre Coursières, second in command of the gendarmerie group of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, specifying that “around a hundred gendarmes” were mobilized “in the area”.
The “scenario” focused in particular on the last minutes during which the little boy was seen around 5:15 p.m., in the only street of this tiny town of 25 inhabitants located at an altitude of 1,200 meters, on the slopes of the Trois-Evêchés massif. The little boy had just arrived for the summer vacation at his maternal grandparents’ second home. His parents, very religious Catholics living in La Bouilladisse, in Bouches-du-Rhône, were not present that day.
Emile’s family supervised by 20 investigators
On Thursday, investigators summoned Emile’s family, neighbors and other eyewitnesses. They were supervised by 20 investigators from the Marseille research section, the criminal investigations unit of the department’s gendarmerie and, again, a team of drone pilots for “image capture for the benefit of investigators”, the gendarmerie had specified.
First opened for a worrying disappearance in Digne-les-Bains, the investigation was quickly entrusted to two investigating judges from Aix-en-Provence then reclassified as criminal grounds for “kidnapping” and “sequestration”. Accident, fall, kidnapping? No trail has been put aside, even if that of the fatal fall has faded following multiple unsuccessful searches around the hamlet.
“It’s always scary to go for a walk, because we don’t know where this child has gone,” Gilles Thezan, a resident, testified on Thursday. The atmosphere has been heavy since July.” But the village has “a lot of hope that we can find the truth,” repeated François Balique, the mayor of Vernet, the village to which the hamlet is attached.