emergencies
France: Search for missing two-year-old unsuccessful
Volunteers in the southern French Alpine village of Le Vernet during a search operation. photo
© Nicolas Tucat/AFP/dpa
The mystery of little Émile keeps France in suspense. Despite an intensive search, the little boy has disappeared.
Four days after the disappearance of a two-and-a-half-year-old boy in a mountain village in southern France, little Émile is still missing.
A new search operation with around 60 police officers will end in the evening, the broadcaster reported BFMTV with reference to the prosecutor. The closure of the 125-inhabitant town of Le Vernet will then also be lifted. Meanwhile, people who were in the area at the weekend but then left and have not yet been questioned are being questioned. Their cars would also be checked.
Despite days of intensive searches, the police have not found any indication of the child’s fate. There is nothing more than the statements of two witnesses who saw him walking down the street. The boy was on vacation with his grandparents when they lost sight of him on Saturday night.
The little one’s chances of survival are shrinking
The search for Émile is met with great public interest in France, and the guesswork about what happened to the child fills newspaper pages and news programs. Public prosecutor Rémy Avon expressed the concern of many people on Tuesday evening: The little one’s chances of survival shrank the longer he wasn’t found, he said. A special commission of 25 investigators is now to investigate the case with further technical and scientific means and also evaluate the approximately 1,200 witnesses.
It’s not the first time that the small mountain town has made the headlines. In March 2015, a Germanwings plane crashed in a mountain range near Le Vernet, killing all 150 on board. The French investigators are convinced that the mentally ill co-pilot caused the plane to crash on purpose. There is a communal grave in Le Vernet in which the mortal remains that could no longer be assigned to any of the victims were buried.