Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: CLEMENT MAHOUDEAU / AFP 7:45 p.m., April 3, 2024
In search of new clues that could explain the circumstances of the death of little Émile, around a hundred gendarmes remained mobilized on Wednesday in Haut-Vernet in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. The system was, however, slightly lightened since the search dogs, specialized in the search for human remains, returned to their unit.
Around a hundred gendarmes remained mobilized on Wednesday in Haut-Vernet in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, in search of new clues that could explain the circumstances of the death of little Émile, the boy who disappeared in July including some of the bones and clothes have been found since Saturday.
Among them, as since Sunday, anthropologists. On the other hand, the search dogs, specialized in the search for human remains, returned to their unit at the Gramat National Dog Center in the Lot. Despite the already discovery of the first material elements, which made it possible to confirm the death of the two and a half year old child, the scientific analyzes did not allow any lead to be favored, according to the public prosecutor of Aix- en-Provence, in charge of the investigation.
“We still cannot favor one hypothesis over another”
“These bones alone (found) do not allow us to say what is the cause of Émile’s death,” Jean-Luc Blachon conceded during a press briefing on Tuesday. “We cannot always favor one hypothesis over another,” insisted the magistrate, in his first intervention to the press since the disappearance of the child, on July 8, in the hamlet of 25 inhabitants attached to the village du Vernet, where he had just arrived with his maternal grandparents for the summer.
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The place where the child's clothes and bones - part of the skull and teeth - were discovered is approximately 1.7 km from the hamlet, a 25-minute walk for an adult. But no one can confirm that Emile's skull and his clothes had been there since July 8. They could have been "brought back by a human person, an animal or the weather conditions", as the gendarmerie spokesperson, Marie-Laure Pezant, explained on Monday.
“The topography is really special”
Because the area had been searched, with tracking dogs and helicopters equipped with thermal cameras, during the searches organized just after the disappearance. "Everything is possible. He could have rolled under a stone in a place that was really inaccessible. But everything was raked and what seems most bizarre to me is that the dogs did not find his trace," said testified to AFPTV Stéphane Kohler, a 49-year-old resident of Vernet.
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"The topography here in Vernet is really special, we have a lot of ravines, steep slopes, brambles, the vegetation in summer is very thick (...). Yes, we can imagine that the child found himself, in case of falling in a hole, under a stone covered by brambles. And in a configuration such that a thermal drone could not identify it", also estimated Magali Lamy, 48 years old, another resident of Vernet.