Ten days after the disappearance of little Emile, in a hamlet in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, the prosecution announced the opening of a judicial investigation on Tuesday July 18, still to find the causes of the worrying disappearance. Two investigating judges from the Aix-en-Provence center have been seized of this file, explains Rémy Avon, public prosecutor of Digne-les-Bains, in a press release, specifying that “all avenues are still being considered, none being excluded or privileged”.
Opened on Sunday July 9 to search for the causes of worrying disappearance, under the regime of flagrante delicto, the investigation had switched to a preliminary investigation on Monday. Twenty-four hours later, “the complexity of the case now justifies the opening of a judicial investigation”, explains the magistrate in his press release.
He highlights in particular “the considerable mass of elements collected during the first week of investigation”, on the ground, in the hamlet of Haut-Vernet, where the little boy of 2 and a half years had arrived for the summer holidays. been in the house of his maternal grandparents.
An email address set up
Emile would have been seen for the last time Saturday, July 8, at 5:15 p.m., alone, in a street of this tiny hamlet of 25 inhabitants. Since then, no trace of the child has been found. Stating that 1,400 telephone reports have been processed, the Digne prosecutor announced on Tuesday that this number was now inactive and that “any element useful to the investigation can now be sent to the email address disappearanceemile04@gendarmerie.interieur .gouv.fr”.
Among the elements collected by the investigators, Mr. Avon said Tuesday that “nearly 1,600 telephone lines” were bound in the Haut-Vernet sector “at the time of the disappearance”. Due to the mountainous topography of the territory, this exact perimeter is difficult to delimit, communications being able to limit on various relays. Haut-Vernet is about 2 kilometers from Vernet, the village of 125 inhabitants to which it is administratively attached, some 30 kilometers north of Digne-les-Bains.
The thirty houses of Haut-Vernet were searched, all the inhabitants questioned and all the vehicles visited. Nearly 100 hectares of fields, woods or steep terrain were “thoroughly” inspected, Mr. Avon said during the research, speaking of “one of the largest forensic search operations ever conducted”.
But all these operations – the first two days in the form of citizen beats with the help of hundreds of volunteers, then by the gendarmes – therefore did not make it possible to find the trace of the child. Neither do specialized search dogs.
Emile, from La Bouilladisse, in the Bouches-du-Rhône, had just started his summer vacation with his maternal grandparents when he disappeared. At that time, “several other family members were also present” in this house, where Emile’s mother had spent her holidays for about twenty years. But neither of the two parents of the child, had specified the prosecutor.