Emergencies
Missing boy recovered dead from the Saar
DLRG emergency services during a search operation on October 3rd. Now the missing boy has been found dead. photo
© Brandon Lee Posse/dpa
He disappears from the playground and is missing for a week. Then comes the sad news: the little boy is dead. His body was recovered from the Saar.
For a week now, the fate of a missing five-year-old boy has been going on Saarbrücken held in suspense. The police searched intensively for days, especially around the place where the child disappeared on October 2nd: a playground on the Saar that he had visited with his family. Many citizens started searches and showed their solidarity with the boy’s family, most recently at a silent march in Saarbrücken with around 1,000 participants.
But on Monday all hope of a happy ending died. The little boy was rescued dead from the Saar. A spokesman for the Saarland State Police Headquarters reported that a passer-by saw a lifeless body in the water at around 8:20 a.m. at the Malstatter Bridge in Saarbrücken and called the police. Emergency services recovered the body.
The boy was autistic
A little later the sad certainty: “Now we can also confirm that the person is the missing Mathis,” said the spokesman. An investigation into the cause of death is ongoing and there will be an autopsy. The twelve-member “Playground” investigative group will continue to work through the background. The police assumed that the five-year-old had left the playground on his own in an unobserved moment.
According to police, the boy was autistic and unable to speak. When he met unknown people, he often ran away. The five-year-old was said to have been walking barefoot at the time of his disappearance.
The missing person case also received a lot of attention in neighboring France. French news channels and newspapers reported on the “worrying disappearance” of the autistic child who was unable to speak.
On the Facebook page “Where is Mathis? Où est Mathis?” On Monday, a red balloon with the inscription “Mathis” commemorated the boy. Citizens also often had red balloons with them during search operations. The boy particularly liked red balloons, as his father told the media.