Saturday July 8, 2023, little Émile, two and a half years old, has disappeared from the home of his grandparents, located in Le Vernet, north-east of Digne-les-Bains, in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, while he was there to spend a few days of vacation. “Masked up” accident? Removal ? Since the little boy has given no sign of life, the investigators do not rule out these two hypotheses and continue to search tirelessly. As the search area has been combed through without success, hope may be dwindling. Especially since Marc Chappuis, prefect of the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, indicated during a press briefing on Monday July 10, 2023, two days after the announcement of the disappearance of little Émile, that “all the searches they had made should have enabled them to locate him.“ As specified Release in an article published Tuesday, July 11, 2023, the chances of locating a missing child are highest in the first 48 hours after their disappearance. The newspaper, however, clarified that there were several cases of children found safe and sound after this delay.
The case of a child found “chilled but healthy” in Ohio, USA
The media cited the case of three of them. That of Ryker Webb, first, a three-year-old boy who disappeared on Friday afternoon June 3, 2022 in Montana, USA. If the hopes of finding him seemed slim, because a violent storm had hit the region the evening of his disappearance, he was finally located after more than 48 hours of research in an old shed that at first sight was locked and which had therefore not been searched by the investigators. He had taken refuge in this place after having “walked for hours in nature looking for insects”, her passion. Anthony AJ Elfalak, a three-year-old Australian boy, had disappeared for three days in November 2022. He had been found by a helicopter in a cove that volunteers had searched, but not methodically enough. Finally, Release cites the example of little Rainn Peterson, found in October 2015 “chilled, but healthy” in a field in Ohio, USA, after two days of disappearance. She was at “less than half a mile from where she disappeared.”