French investigators have called off their search for missing two-year-old Emile after five days of digging around the Alpine hamlet of Le Vernet ‘turned up nothing’.
Digne-les-Bains public prosecutor Rémy Avon said 100 investigators had covered 97 hectares, while volunteers went out to cover more ground.
He said: ‘We are now entering the second phase, the longer period when investigators will study interviews, telephone records or vehicle inspections.’
Emile went missing from his grandparents’ garden in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence on Saturday, prompting fears that he had been hit by a car and the body taken.
A gendarme commander had earlier assured: ‘Of course, we still hope to find him alive, but somewhere else. When he died in the enclosure the dogs would smell him.’
Two-year-old Emil, who went missing from his grandparents’ garden in the Alps on Saturday
Volunteers are briefed by French gendarmes before taking part in a search operation for two-and-a-half-year-old Emile, who has been reported missing for two days on July 10, 2023.
A group of gendarmes go hunting for little Emil, July 10, 2023
This week, French authorities worked through the 1.8 kilometer road connecting Vernet with Haute-Vernet.
Avon has clearly stated in the latest update that ‘these operations have yielded nothing’.
Searches have so far brought together 800 gendarmes, firefighters, volunteers, helicopters, thermal camera drones and sniffer dogs.
On Tuesday, airborne searchers were given a recording of the mother’s voice to play ‘as loud as possible’ over the plane’s speakers.
Emergency services hoped the child would ‘hide in the countryside and come out when he heard his mother’s voice from a helicopter.’
Police are also investigating another hypothesis, that Emile may have been abducted.
They had earlier rejected suggestions to abduct him.
Marc Chapuis, police officer in charge of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, said: ‘He was two-and-a-half years old, he was able to walk quite a distance.
‘But all the hunting we’ve done over the last two days should have allowed us to find him.’
Avon said earlier this week that so far ‘no material points to a criminal offense that could be the source of this disappearance.’
‘From the moment there is no crime, there is no person involved,’ he repeated.
Searches have so far brought together 800 gendarmes, firefighters, volunteers, helicopters, thermal camera drones and sniffer dogs.
A gendarme is followed by a camera as around fifty mobile gendarmes cross a ‘1.8 km road’ from Gap, France on July 13, 2023.
On July 13, 2023, gendarmes cautiously searched the outskirts of the village of Vernet
Emile was playing in the garden of his unnamed grandparents’ home in Haut-Vernet, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, on Saturday afternoon when he went missing.
Her parents – who have not been named – stayed at their home near Marseille, 200 miles away, for the summer holidays.
The family was getting ready to leave home when Emil took advantage of the inattention, officials said.
His grandparents came to pick him up in the car and found him gone.
The grandparents then alerted authorities to Emil’s disappearance around 5.15 p.m. [4.15pm BST] Family members, police, emergency services workers and local villagers began searching for the boy on Saturday.