Missing person case
The fate of six-year-old Arian continues to move many people
Six-year-old Arian from Elm in the Rotenburg (Wümme) district remains missing after a week of searching. photo
© Daniel Bockwoldt/dpa
Arian has been missing from Bremervörde for more than a week. Hundreds of emergency services and volunteers searched day and night for the boy. The people of the place don’t want to give up.
In the case of the missing six-year-old Arian Bremervörde in the north of Lower Saxony, the police are investigating in all directions. “It’s always very important that you don’t focus too much on one direction and lose sight of something else,” said a police spokesman.
Accordingly, the “Arian investigative group” evaluates clues and traces and tries to formulate hypotheses about what could have happened on the day of the disappearance and how likely that is. “We are still at the very beginning at the moment,” said the spokesman, referring to the work of the group, which consists of a total of five investigators. Bremervörde is located in the Rotenburg (Wümme) district between Bremerhaven and Hamburg.
Lots of information from the public
Investigators continue to assume that the boy left home on his own. This also corresponds to the recordings from a private surveillance camera. These show the autistic boy walking alone towards the forest. In missing person cases, family circumstances also come into focus, he explained. According to the spokesman, there is still a lot of information from the population. This also includes tips from people who are familiar with the topic of autism. The police are generally grateful for information.
Days of searching on the ground, from the air and in the water
Arian has been missing since Monday evening, April 22nd. His father alerted the police when he noticed that his son was no longer at home. “The boy only recently learned how to open locked doors,” the police spokesman said shortly after the child’s disappearance. “That may be the background.”
The police immediately initiated search measures with hundreds of emergency services. For a week, emergency services and local volunteers searched day and night for Arian – at times with dogs, horses, helicopters, drones, a tornado plane, amphibious vehicle, boats and diving equipment. After a week, the police stopped the active search on Tuesday. The investigative team should continue to work on the case.
Highly motivated management and operational staff
According to the spokesman, there was one main reason why hundreds of emergency services from the police, fire brigade, Bundeswehr, technical relief agency and German Life Saving Society searched for Arian on the ground, from the air and in the water for days: “That has something to do with it “We had highly motivated people in decision-making positions,” he explained. “It was about saving a human life.”
The decisions were not made in one place, but always in consultation with the team. When asked about the costs, the spokesman said: “Certainly there were costs, but that is of secondary importance in this case. We decided on measures pragmatically. We had a lot of volunteers.”
Where could Arian be?
The boy’s fate is still unclear. Arian may have fallen into the Oste River, the spokesman said. The flow speed is high. The police had searched the East and smaller bodies of water near the boy’s home several times with boats and divers. But it could also be that the child was hiding somewhere, said the spokesman. “We are investigating in all directions.” And: “Maybe there will be a miracle in the end.”
Grief and hope in the place where you live
In Elm, the district of Bremervörde where the boy lives, sympathy remains high. “The concern is huge,” said local resident Hans-Hermann Tiedemann to the German Press Agency on Tuesday. “There is no one who – when they are somewhere – doesn’t look,” he reported, referring to the people in the district. Everyone kept looking somehow.
The deputy mayor of Elm, Christian Dilissen, said the past few days had been very moving for the community. Accordingly, within a very short time after Arian’s family was called, the entire village was on its feet looking for the child. Now the mood is clouded. “We were all full of euphoria. Our goal was of course to find him too.”