With just a few days to go until the national holiday of July 14 and still under the shock of the recent riots, the news of the disappearance of a two-and-a-half-year-old boy in the Alps once again has France in its heart. Little Émile left his grandparents' house alone on Saturday afternoon, and at the close of this edition, hundreds of police, firefighters and volunteers were still looking for him.
The fact that the area is very steep, with thick forests, rivers and very high vegetation, made the tracking tasks, which involve dogs, a helicopter and drones equipped with thermal cameras, particularly difficult.
The boy was spending a few days with his grandparents at the family's second home in Le Haute-Vernet, a small town that belongs to the municipality of Le Vernet, in the department of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, about 170 kilometers north of Marseille The alpine town has barely 130 inhabitants.
The grandparents were preparing the car for a short evening excursion with Émile. Apparently, the child was in the garden of the house, a safe place. For unknown reasons, Émile left. Two witnesses claim they saw him coming down the street. They did not attach importance to it or give the warning because the place is so placid that the creatures, even the smallest ones, play and run outside the houses without much adult supervision.
The call to the police took place at 5.15 pm and since then the search has been unsuccessful. The Prosecutor's Office of Digne-les-Bains took over the case and posted on social networks a photo of the boy, his physical description and a contact phone number. Émile is 90 centimeters tall, has blond hair and brown eyes. He was wearing a yellow T-shirt and white shorts with a green inscription. He was wearing sneakers.
The researchers do not rule out or privilege any hypothesis, including the criminal one, although, due to the circumstances that have transpired, there is no prior indication that the child had been kidnapped or was a victim of violence. All the neighbors know each other. Prosecutor Rémy Avon confirmed yesterday afternoon, in a press conference, that they have not found any element of criminal action at the moment and, therefore, no suspect has been questioned.
The first 48 hours are the critical period for these cases, since from then on it is considered that the chances of survival for a child of this age and in this environment plummet. The search focused on a radius of five kilometers, assuming that Émile could not go any further. Volunteers and police, lined up four or five meters apart, combed fields and forests. The police also thoroughly searched the houses, with the permission of the neighbors, to rule out the possibility that Émile had been hiding there or had had an accident. The device provided for when there is suspicion of kidnapping or a pedophile crime has not been activated, for now. It is therefore required that there be some indication of the crime.
Temperatures have been very high during the day in this area of the Alps, almost close to forty degrees, but they drop a lot at night. These are worrying factors because they reduce the chances of finding the child alive in the event of a fall and being trapped in the rubbish. The prefect of the department, Marc Chappins, indicated that, starting today, Tuesday, hairstyles will no longer be carried out and a "more selective search" will be carried out with specialized means. Chappins numbered eight hundred people, including police, firefighters and volunteers, who have participated in the search, and highlighted the "great solidarity" that is being experienced. Chappins has spoken to the boy's family, who, in his own words, are "devastated".
This region of the Alps was shaken, in March 2015, by the drama of the plane of the German company Germanwings that crashed very close to it. The co-pilot of the device, Andreas Lubitz, had a suicidal raving, locked himself in the cabin when the pilot had left and plunged the Airbus A320, with 150 people on board, into the mountain. The plane had taken off from Barcelona and was heading to Düsseldorf.
Speaking to Le Parisien, the mayor of Le Vernet, François Balique, was very concerned. "It's a race against time," he said. Balique indicated that Émile's family lives in Marseille but has been spending their holidays in this town in the Alps for about twenty years and has never attracted attention for any particular problem. "Normally a child can't go very far - continued the mayor, with skepticism. Even if he comes from a family of hikers and may be better than the average kid his age, he can't have gone anywhere where he can't be found." Balique alluded to the Germanwings crash. "It is a total drama for the people - he concluded -. In 2015, the Germanwings plane crashed. That pain passed and is part of the memory. These two days of searching for Émile have plunged us back into tragedy."
