What happened and when?
Emile, a two-and-a-half-year-old boy from a large family, was staying with his grandparents for two weeks in the hamlet of Le Haut Vernet (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence). He disappeared on Saturday, July 8 as his family packed the car for an outing.
It is thought that Emile wandered off by himself as he was reportedly seen in the hamlet before his disappearance. The village is so small that it was not unusual to see children out and about, so a few people who reportedly saw him did not think to raise the alarm.
However, despite village-wide searches with dogs and infrared helicopters, Emile has not been located. A kidnapping was believed to be unlikely, and no nationwide kidnapping alert has been issued.
Read more: Boy, 2, still missing in French Alps nearly three days on
What are the latest changes?
The prosecutor of nearby Digne-les-Bains this week announced it had opened a new judicial inquiry into the case. Two judges from Aix-en-Provence are now investigating, with inquiries centred on data and evidence collected from the scene and search area.
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Searches were stopped four days after the disappearance, and helicopters are no longer flying over.
The hamlet of Le Haut Vernet, which is above the village of Vernet, is closed to any non-residents until July 31 at midnight, in a bid to control the comings and goings of outsiders.
Read more: Boy, 2, missing in French Alps: Outsiders banned from search site
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One resident told FranceInfo: “Now, there are ‘them’, and there is ‘us’: we are split in two.” Others said they no longer want to talk to journalists and want the family to be left in peace.
The mayor, François Balique, said: “I have encouraged everyone to go back to normal life…we are coming out the other side as well as could be expected, and trying to forget, while also waiting for news.”
Residents’ contrasting views
One resident, Jeanne, who told FranceInfo she was a long-time friend of Emile’s family, described the boy as “dynamic” and “very cute”. She said: “He speaks very well. He is always with people who are older, so he wants to do the same as they do…[but] I’m sorry, I can’t talk about it anymore, it upsets me too much.”
She added the atmosphere in the village is starting to “go back to normal” and “calm down”.
However, another resident, Charlotte, who said she knew the family “a little bit”, has called for less calm and less silence, and called the atmosphere “oppressive” and “tense”.
She said: “Little secrets lead to bigger ones. Maybe some people know something but they’re not saying anything?”
‘There was an intervention from an adult’
Theories have spread over what happened to Emile.
Some have reported rumours of a car accident, although investigators have not said whether they are following any particular lead.
Mr Balique said that he believes that “there was intervention from an adult”. He told the regional newspaper La Dépêche du Midi: “It was maybe a car driving through too quickly. And the driver, instead of reacting normally, panicked.
“I am sure that the body is not in the commune, we’ve turned everything upside down. He has been moved. There was intervention by an adult, whether he’s alive or dead.”
Read more: ‘Final sweep’ for boy, 2, missing in French Alps since Saturday
Past trauma
The village is perhaps also in shock after an unfortunate series of events in recent years.
In 2008, the manager of a cafe in Vernet, Jeannette Grosos, was killed by a man with mental health issues.
In 2015, the Germanwings Airbus A320 crashed in the mountains, killing 149 people and the pilot. At the time, a resident of the village, Bernard, helped authorities by driving family members to and from the crash site to help them make sense of the disaster.
To thank him, the airline gifted him and his family tickets for a France-Germany football match at the Stade de France in Paris. This would be the match that was affected by the terrorist attacks of November 2015. No one from the village was killed, but Bernard said: “I was scared.”
He asked: “Planes fall out of the sky here, people kill here, and now children disappear; what are people going to say about us?”
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