The French authorities announced this Thursday the conclusion of the large-scale tracking device deployed to find Émile, a two-and-a-half-year-old boy who disappeared last Saturday in a mountainous area in southeastern France, although the judicial investigation continues and will be carried out. an exhaustive analysis of the material collected to try to find any clues that help determine what happened to him. The news was announced by prosecutor Rémy Avon, who had already explained the day before that from now on the investigations would enter a new, slower and more laborious phase.
During the morning of this Thursday, some fifty gendarmes have been mobilized to do one last search in a stretch of 1.8 kilometers, the most probable route of the child when he left his grandparents' house. Although the area was already extensively inspected in previous days, it was an additional attempt to clear up any doubts.
Since the field searches did not provide new data, the authorities only have two testimonies from residents of the small town of Haut-Vernet who, already at the weekend, had declared that they had seen the child from a distance leaving the house of his family and walking alone down a small downhill street.
The investigations carried out include the tracking of the thirty buildings that make up the population, located in the Alpes de Haute Provence region (near Nice), and the thorough search of 12 vehicles and a dozen hectares around. Those responsible for the search, from the beginning, do not exclude any hypothesis, either that the child left on his account and got lost, or even a possible kidnapping, but for now they have no indications to think of a criminal act.
In the case of a fortuitous disappearance, the prosecutor Rémy himself had expressed pessimism about the prognosis of finding the child alive given his young age and the weather conditions, very hot during the day and cold at night. Haut-Vernet, located at 1,200 meters above sea level, is a community where only 25 people live and is surrounded by forests and fields.
