A 17-year-old high school student, who disappeared Monday afternoon while jogging in a forest in Mayenne, reappeared Tuesday evening in a kebab restaurant in Sablé-sur-Sarthe. She told investigators that she was kidnapped and kidnapped by several kidnappers, before managing to flee. On site, the field survey is continuing.
The 17-year-old girl who had been missing since late Monday afternoon, when she had gone for a run in the Bellebranche forest in Mayenne, was found alive Tuesday evening in Sarthe, a neighboring department. The teenager, a well-integrated high school student, took refuge in a kebab restaurant after managing to escape from a car, according to a neighbor who witnessed the scene.
· The victim “injured” and “in shock”
The teenager, in shock, took refuge Tuesday evening, “bloody” and “in shock”, in a kebab in Sablé-sur-Sarthe, a town located about ten kilometers from where she was disappeared Monday. Supported, she was transported to hospital by ambulance.
The owner of the kebab restaurant where she presented herself told our colleagues this Wednesday about West France the moment of its discovery.
“It is my brother, who is my partner and with whom I manage this business, who welcomed the young girl,” he explains. “It took place shortly after 8 p.m. He called me and I arrived about twenty minutes after the start of the events. The youngster had a little blood on her. She was not well. As in condition. shocked or traumatized. She was greeted and reassured in the restaurant while awaiting the arrival of the firefighters and gendarmes “.
“Injured” and shocked, she finds herself with her family this Wednesday, according to our information, in the town of Saint-Brice, in Mayenne, where she resides. During her press briefing on Tuesday, the prosecutor of the Republic of Laval Céline Maigné had described “a young girl who does not present any notable peculiarity and who is perfectly inserted, surrounded, athletic, who continues her studies in a high school in the region” .
· Kidnapped and kidnapped by “several kidnappers”
According to our information, in her first statements to investigators, the teenager recounted having been kidnapped and then kidnapped by “several kidnappers” before managing to escape. An investigation for “kidnapping and sequestration” was therefore opened and entrusted to the Angers research section and to the research brigade of the Château-Gontier-sur-Mayenne gendarmerie company.
What happened during the 24 hours of his disappearance? For now, investigators ignore it. The teenager could not give much details on the place where she was taken or the identity of her captors Tuesday evening, because she was not in a state to deliver herself to the investigators.
A jog in the forest
Monday a little before 7 p.m., her father contacted the gendarmerie because he had no news of his daughter, who had gone jogging since 4 p.m. in the Bellebranche forest near Château-Gontier-sur-Mayenne and Saint-Brice. . “An activity which is usual for him”, according to the prosecutor.
“Her father, alerted by the length of her absence, went to the route she usually takes and did not find her there,” Céline Maigné said at a press conference on Tuesday. “His research led him to discover different effects that he recognizes as belonging to his daughter and which are being exploited.”
According to the Strava application, which allows you to share her sports performances thanks to GPS tracking, the young girl used to make a loop of about 5 km, in 25 minutes, north of the village of Saint- Brice. On Monday, his route was interrupted after 5 minutes, just one kilometer from his home, at the intersection of two roads in an unwooded area, near the national forest of Bellebranche.
Man held in custody released
A man in his forties, in a state of intoxication, was arrested on Monday and then placed in police custody on Monday evening, “in order to clarify his schedule in view of the few inconsistencies in his first statements. “, also clarified Céline Maigné.
But the latter was released on Wednesday. “The investigations carried out have made it possible to clarify the elements which motivated this measure and to rule out the involvement of the accused person”, wrote the prosecution in a press release.
A hundred gendarmes and investigators still mobilized
From Monday evening, a large gendarmerie device was rapidly deployed: Tuesday, at the height of the search, 200 soldiers were thus mobilized in this large and difficult to access area. And the day after the reappearance of the young girl this Wednesday, the investigations are continuing. A hundred gendarmes and investigators are still mobilized in the region to try to get their hands on his kidnapper (s).
According to our information, the mission of the police is to secure the perimeter, to carry out research, forensic and scientific investigations. In particular, they go door to door in order to collect clues from the neighborhood: suspicious behavior that may be spotted or other details that could be useful for the investigation.
Tuesday evening, a dog team was also seen by our special correspondent in Sablé-sur-Sarthe, making tours of the neighborhood around the restaurant, with a tracking dog sniffing a tissue.
· His “relieved” neighbors and relatives
In the town of Saint-Brice, many residents have expressed their relief to our microphone after the teenager was found alive. “It’s an immense pleasure!”, Rejoiced André Boisseau, the mayor. “I put myself in the shoes of the parents who must have been very, very happy to have this outcome there”.
“We are reassured, it is an incredible relief”, confides a neighbor, moved. “I have children of 12 and 13 years old (…) and when I learned that she had been found I almost cried because we put ourselves in the shoes of the parents. It’s awful”.
His classmates, too, shared their emotion, not without recalling the concern that has been theirs since Monday. “We talked about it a lot, we wondered how it happened, if she was okay, how she felt,” a young high school friend of the victim told BFMTV in particular. A listening unit has been set up within the school.