A nine-year-old boy has been rescued after being locked in his father’s van since 2024, a French prosecutor said.
A neighbour alerted police to “sounds of a child” coming from a vehicle in the village of Hagenbach, near the borders of Switzerland and Germany on Monday.
After forcing the van open, officers found a child “lying in a foetal position, naked, covered by a blanket on top of a mound of trash and near excrement”, prosecutor Nicolas Heitz said.
He added the child was clearly malnourished and could no longer walk because he had been sitting down for so long.
When officers spoke to the boy, he said he had not showered since 2024.
Neighbour Danielle says she ‘never once noticed anything’
His father told investigators he put the child in the truck in November of that year “to protect him” because his partner wanted to send the boy to a psychiatric hospital.
But the prosecutor said there were no medical records of the boy suffering psychiatric problems before he disappeared.
The father has been held in custody on charges including preliminary kidnapping.
His partner, who denied knowing the boy was in the van, has been charged with offences including failure to help a minor in danger and released under judicial supervision.
‘There are no words’
The discovery shocked residents in the small village, with one neighbour named Danielle, describing the situation as “truly devastating”.
“We don’t understand it. It’s horrific, there are no words,” she said.
“I never once noticed anything, never heard anything…It feels like we’re living in a movie or a dream, and we keep thinking, ‘tomorrow I’ll wake up, and maybe it’s not real’. We just can’t comprehend it.”
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The boy’s 12-year-old sister and the 10-year-old daughter of his father’s partner have been placed in the care of social services.
Friends and family told investigators they thought the boy was in a psychiatric facility, while his teachers were told he had transferred to a different school.
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