There are hours of anguish in France for little Emile, the 2 and a half year old boy who keeps the country in suspense. Since Saturday it has disappeared into thin air and the searches of teams of gendarmes assisted by helicopters, dog units and many volunteers have not given any results. The boy, who loves to “chase butterflies”, had just arrived in the mountains with his grandparents, in a small village in the Alpes de Haute Provence, Vernet, north of Digne-les-Bains. Inhabitants: 125. The farm from which he disappeared is a little higher up the mountain, where only 25 live. For more than two days they sifted through everything, step by step.
Since this morning the jokes have been suspended, but not the searches. From operations with a large number of people and a broad spectrum, the activity has become “focused” and “selective”. The volunteers were thanked and dismissed, now it’s up to the scientific experts, the technicians who will sift through hundreds of calls and telephone messages from people present in the area and witnesses. The Upper Vernet area, the residence of Emile’s grandparents, is completely cordoned off and inaccessible to people outside the village.
Emile had just arrived with his maternal grandparents to spend the summer holidays in the mountains. For the last time he was spotted at 5.15pm on Saturday by two neighbors, he was playing alone in an alley of the village of 25 inhabitants but these two people did not consider the situation strange. Playing and wandering around those narrow streets was considered safe. For the rest, nothing transpires, it is not even known who of Emile’s family was present in the house at the time of the child’s disappearance. Among the few leaked details, that of the unusually high number of brothers and sisters of Emile’s mother (there are 9), some of whom are just teenagers.
Marc Chappuis, the prefect, explained very frankly that – given the accuracy of the searches – “in 48 hours we should have found the child in this perimeter”, about 5 kilometers away. But, he added, “we don’t stop, we don’t lose hope”. The 80 gendarmes involved in the maxi-operation are breathless, they are helped by a dozen soldiers in the area who know the area very well and canine units. At the moment, the investigators indicate, nothing suggests a criminal or illegal initiative at the origin of Emile’s disappearance.
Since this morning, the gendarmerie technicians have been sifting through all the telephone activity in the Upper Vernet area in recent days, which cell phones were active, who called and to whom. Furthermore, all the houses have been thoroughly searched, inch by inch, except a couple which are uninhabited. The area is mountainous, full of small escarpments and streams. If Emile had gotten lost, he would have already spent 3 nights outdoors, without drinking or eating and with rather high temperatures. An element that contributed to increasing the anguish was an appeal launched on Facebook and then taken up with loudspeakers in the area, attributed to Emile’s mother. Both she and her husband are fervent Catholics and invite prayers for a local devotee, referred to as a “seer”. The initiative – “pray for the venerable sister Benoite Rencurel” – has remained mysterious although followed by more than 2,000 people on the Facebook page.
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