Get you up to speed: Father arrested for kidnapping after nine-year-old boy is rescued from van in France
A nine-year-old boy was rescued from his father’s utility van in Hagenbach, Eastern France, where he had been locked since November 2024. Prosecutor Nicolas Heitz stated that the father, 43, claimed he confined his son to protect him from being sent to a psychiatric hospital.
Prosecutor Nicolas Heitz stated that the boy had no record of psychiatric issues prior to his disappearance and had been performing well in school. Following the rescue, both the boy’s father and his partner face legal charges, with the father being held for kidnapping and the partner charged with failing to assist a minor in danger.
The boy has been taken to hospital following his rescue, and his father is in police custody on kidnapping charges while his partner, who denied knowing about the boy’s situation, has been charged with failing to help a minor in danger and released under judicial supervision. Social services have taken both the boy and his 12-year-old sister into care.
Child, 9, locked in seated position in father’s van for years ‘unable to walk’ | News World
Outside view of the building where a 9-year-old boy was rescued this week after living locked in his father’s utility van since 2024, in Hagenbach, Eastern France (Picture: AP)
A nine-year-old boy who was trapped in his dad’s van for two years, malnourished and without access to a toilet, has been rescued.
Neighbour heard ‘sounds of a child’ coming from a van, near but were initially told it was just a cat.
But officers who broke the vehicle open found the child ‘lying in a fetal position, naked, covered by a blanket on top of a mound of trash and near excrement,’ in Hagenback, on the Swiss and German borders, on Monday.
According to prosecutor Nicolas Heitz, the father, 43, told police that he put his son in the van in November 2024 ‘to protect him’ because his partner, 37, wanted to send him to a psychiatric hospital.
He also outlined the conditions his father held him in, telling the child to urinate in plastic bottles and defecate in bin bags, adding that his last shower was at the end of 2024.
The child was visibly malnourished and could no longer walk because he had been kept in a seated position for so long. He has now been taken to hospital.
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The perimeter of Hagenbach where the child was rescued (Picture: AP)
Heitz said the boy had no record of psychiatric issues before his disappearance and that he had good marks at school.
The child told police that he had ‘big difficulties’ with his father’s partner and that he thought his dad had ‘no choice’ other than to lock him up.
His father was held in police custody on kidnapping charges after his arrest, while the partner denied knowing anything about the boy being in the van.
She was also charged with failing to help a minor in danger but was released under judicial supervision.
The boy also has a 12-year-old sister, while the partner has a 10-year-old daughter too, who lived in a block of flats with the couple.
Both of them were taken into care by social services.
Friends and family told police they thought the boy was already in a psychiatric institution while his teachers were told he had moved to a new school – now detectives are looking into whether other people knew about his imprisonment.
Residents said they heard noises coming from the van but were told it was a cat. One, called Danielle, told reporters it was ‘truly devastating’.
She said: ‘We don’t understand it. It’s horrific, there are no words.
‘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.’
The victim and his relatives were not named.
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