The search operations around the hamlet of Haut-Vernet, where little Emile has been missing for more than three days, should “in principle end today”, Wednesday July 12, Rémy Avon told Agence France-Presse , the prosecutor of Digne-les-Bains, announcing “a new temporality of the investigation”. “There are still a few vehicles to visit and a few hearings to drive from the people present in Haut-Vernet on Saturday when the child” aged two and a half, explained the magistrate.
The little boy was last seen on Saturday around 5:15 p.m., alone, in a downhill street in the hamlet.
Already, all of the thirty buildings that make up this tiny hamlet in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence have been searched, twelve vehicles visited, the twenty-five inhabitants of the town heard and twelve hectares of land “meticulously raked”, had declared the public prosecutor of Digne on Tuesday evening during a press conference in Vernet, the village of one hundred and twenty-five inhabitants on which Haut-Vernet depends, about two kilometers away.
“We are no longer in a media tempo”
“We are now going to enter another temporality of the investigation, which will consist in analyzing the considerable mass of elements collected” during this field investigation and the technical and scientific investigation, with in particular the analysis of the data telephony around the hamlet at the time of Emile’s disappearance, explained the prosecutor. “We are no longer in a media tempo, and it is good to lift the very strong pressure exerted on the hamlet”, also underlined the magistrate.
As for the idea that the child was actually able to get lost alone and that he was not found around the hamlet, despite the beatings of citizens carried out for two days, then the methodical searches carried out by the gendarmes on Tuesday, it is still not to be ruled out, according to Mr. Avon, “even if this probability is very small”.
During his press conference late Tuesday afternoon, the Digne prosecutor explained that in this case “the vital prognosis (of little Emile) would be very, very involved”.