2023-07-11 18:41:27
Francia looks for Émile, a blond boy with blue eyes, who runs after the butterflies. He disappeared with his 2 and a half yearson Saturday in Vernet, a hamlet of 25 houses, in the Alpes de Haute Provence.
Neither the police nor the interviews with all the inhabitants nor the searches that they have organized in that mountainous terrain and with small streams have found it. Everyone is looking for it.
The little he escaped from the surveillance of his grandparents Saturday. Two neighbors saw him walking alone through the village but it did not attract their attention. The boys play alone in Vernet, they all know each other. Since then no one else has seen him.
All hypotheses are being investigated. This Tuesday, the gendarmerie, their specialized search dogs, closed the town to search for him. No one but them can enter.
On Saturday, the maternal grandparents stayed with the child at La Bouilladisse, in Bouches-du-Rhône. Émilie was in the garden after taking a nap. At that time, she escaped from her surveillance.
“The family was about to leave the house for an excursion. And, at that moment, they took advantage of this moment of hesitation to slip away,” explained François Balique, mayor of the Vernet commune.
The gendarmes prepare to search for Emile, in Le Vernet, in the French Alps. Photo: AFP
The grandparents noticed the disappearance when they tried to put Émile in the car. They gave the alert around 5:15 p.m. Quickly, the inhabitants of the commune met to start the investigations “around and in the town.” A useless first operation.
However, two witnesses saw the boy “on a downhill street”, before the search began, without concern for it.
Gendarmes, firefighters and dogs
Important means have been deployed in the hope of finding the little one. Several dozens of gendarmes and firefighters were mobilized on Sunday and Monday, as well as a canine team with Saint-Hubert dogs, hounds useful for investigation.
Important technical means have also been put into operation, such as a helicopter with a thermal camera, in addition to drones, which are also equipped. Finally, a large-scale search was mounted thanks to almost 200 volunteers.
The houses of the neighbors were raided, the surroundings were searched, passers-by and neighbors were questioned. Unsuccessfully. During his press conference held on Monday evening, the prefect of the Alpes de Haute Provence, Marc Chappuis, acknowledged that significant progress has not yet been made.
Dozens of gendarmes in the French Alps, in an exhaustive search for Emile, 2 and a half years old. Photo: AFP
“Despite all this investigation, we have not been able to locate the child,” he explained at the end of the day on Monday.
The mayor of the town admitted that “every square meter has already been scrutinized” during the first phase of investigation, in the surrounding 5 kilometers. The sweeps carried out during the last 60 hours have covered all the area that a small child could theoretically have covered. Therefore, the research method must evolve.
A military approach
Instead of betting on a large number of mobilized, the investigation passes this Tuesday to a more “directed” approach.
About fifty mobile gendarmes are on the scene, this time without firefighters. Two army vehicles were also used.
The researchers will also be analyzing phone connections from the area during the disappearance window, in search of suspicious connections, in this hamlet of a handful of inhabitants.
The kidnapping clue is in study Little Émile was not found where he theoretically could have been. “Other clues, in addition to the escape, are still on the table,” explained General François Daoust.
In addition to the “missing child” hypothesis, there are those of the “covered accident” and the “predator of opportunity.”
“No one is privileged or excluded,” prosecutor Rémy Avon said Monday.
No element has so far allowed to favor the kidnapping track. The alert has not been triggered, which means that the “administrative criteria” have not been met. However, since the first hypotheses explored had yielded nothing, this could be taken more seriously.
“Nothing surprising,” explains General François Daoust, director of the gendarmerie’s research center and professor of criminal sciences at the University of Cergy-Paris.
With the favored hypothesis of a voluntary departure of the little boy from his grandparents’ house, the first investigation was carried out in a closed perimeter, following the “erratic and irrational path that a two-and-a-half-year-old child lost” in nature could have taken. . But as time goes by, this hypothesis seems less and less likely.
Nearly 200 inhabitants of Le Vernet joined the search voluntarily. Photo: AFP
three tracks
“In this type of case, there are three clues,” François Daoust believes: “An aimless escape, an accident, with a distraught person who hid the body, and a kidnapping by a predator.”
The lack of convincing elements, all hypotheses are tested, even those that are not favored. “Everyone was focused on the searches but, in parallel, the judicial investigation is advancing with the hearings, the exploration of the telephone and the home visits,” the general specifies.
After two days of fruitless searches, it is increasingly unlikely that the boy is within the swept three-mile radius of the grandparents’ house, and that he could have survived there without water.
“Hypothesis 1 loses credibility, Hypothesis 2 then becomes the most likely” for the researchers.
The prefect had indicated that this Tuesday “specialized media in the search for traces and clues” would be deployed. “They will study the telephony and identify the people and vehicles that have passed through the sector and they will study the tracks of these vehicles”, explains François Daoust.
Search operations do not stop to find little Emile, in the French Alps. Photo: AFP
More house searches could be conducted, this time looking for a hidden body rather than a child accidentally trapped in a room. The possibility of finding the little boy alive vanishes.
This does not mean, however, that the first hypothesis is completely excluded and the investigation is abandoned.
More than 80 gendarmes were still mobilized on Tuesday morning, according to a source close to the investigation, as well as ten Army soldiers specializing in clearing, dog teams and helicopters that were available.
without traces
“After the track dogs”, specifies François Daoust, “we can also deploy the area dogs, which will rather search for a scent in the air of the child or a corpse”.
The objective now is to find a new element that can guide the investigation. On Monday night, authorities said they did not have any.
Entrusted to the gendarmes of the Marseille investigation section, the investigations will now be more stringent in the village of Haut-Vernet and will be run exclusively by military. The “civilians” have been denied access this Tuesday in July to let the gendarmes work – more than 60 are mobilized – in this steep wooded area dotted with small streams.
This Tuesday’s investigation will have the particular objective of collecting useful clues in the context of the judicial investigation. The Saint-Hubert of the gendarmerie, dogs famous for their style, should once again be used by investigators.
At this stage, if they have “marked” in certain places recently frequented by the little one, the dogs have not allowed Émile to be found.
Since Saturday, beyond the operational investigation to find the little one, the researchers have multiplied the witness hearings to try to explain the circumstances of his disappearance.
In particular, they listened for a long time to two people who explained that, around 5:15 p.m. on Saturday, they saw the little boy alone near his grandparents’ house. They also interviewed practically all the inhabitants of the hamlet. Almost all (23 of 25) houses in the village were also “visited” by the gendarmes. No success so far.
“Disturbing disappearance”
Nothing directs the investigation towards a criminal lead at this stage.
“You have to listen to a lot of people again to refine the investigation or to see if they have missed details,” confides a source close to the investigations.
“The investigative technique is quite simple: we listen to as many people as possible, without ruling out any leads,” he adds. According to the first elements collected by the gendarmes, no suspicious elements appear in the group of the little boy’s family.
For the Digne-les-Bains prosecutor, Rémy Avron, nothing directs the investigation towards the criminal path at this stage. “As it is, we do not have any elements that characterize a criminal offense,” he explained Monday night during a brief press conference.
The investigation is still open at this stage for “disturbing disappearance”.
Paris, correspondent
CB
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