Police give update as helicopter teams use mother’s voice recording in search – live

The search for missing two-year-old Emile is “at the same point” as it was yesterday, the local prosecutor has said.

“As I speak to you, the operations have not brought any useful elements to the investigation”, Rémy Avon, public prosecutor for Digne-les-Bains, told a press conference on Tuesday evening, La Provence reports.

“We have no clue, no information, no element that can help us understand this disappearance. We are at the same point than yesterday at the same time”, Mr Avon added.

French police searching for a two-year-old boy who went missing from his grandparents’ garden in the French Alps on Saturday said on Tuesday they had no clues as to what could have happened to him.

The boy, Emile, was last seen walking down the street of his grandparents’ house – located in a remote mountain outpost with only two dozen inhabitants – by two witnesses on Saturday afternoon, a prosecutor said.

Police and gendarmes have entered every building of the settlement. Some 500 volunteers have also helped with the search, looking for Emile in the forests and fields that surround the village, the local prefect’s office said on Twitter.

“At this point, we don’t have any clues allowing us to follow any particular theory (on his whereabouts)”, the local public prosecutor told FranceInfo radio.

Remy Anon, the prosecutor of the Republic of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence in France, told reporters last evening that “we are working on all the hypotheses”.

He added: “Medically we are told that beyond a period of 48 hours, given the young age of the child, given his constitution and considering that a human who would be deprived of food and water by the current high heat, the vital prognosis is very very engaged.”

“The 30 buildings that make up the Haut-Vernet building were completely visited. 25 people were heard, 12 vehicles visited, 12 hectares raked”, public prosecutor Rémy Avon told a press conference on Tuesday evening.

The search will resume tomorrow, as investigators probe the 1,200 calls received on the dedicated case line over the past 3 days.

“We will have to give the gendarmes time”, Mr Avon added.

So far, 500 volunteers have helped with the search for two-year-old Emile, who has been missing since Saturday.

Two-year-old Emile was last seen playing in the garden of a property in Le Vernet in the Alpes-de-Haute department of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, with his grandparents notifying the police of his disappearance at around 5.15pm local time on Saturday.

“At this point, we don’t have any clues allowing us to follow any particular theory (on his whereabouts)”, the local prosecutor told Franceinfo Radio.

Meanwhile, a volunteer named Roxanne told the AFP news agency on Monday: “We took part in a big search this morning with 50 other people.

“There was a gap of two metres (7 feet) between each of us, we looked in the fields, and in the woods.

“We looked out for the smallest clue, maybe an item of clothing or a shoe he could have lost.”

The dedicated hotline has received 1,200 calls, with 30 buildings searched, 25 people interviewed, 12 vehicles searched and 12 hectares raked.

A desperate search is underway for a toddler who vanished from a garden while on holiday with his grandparents in the south of France.

Two-year-old Emile, whose surname is unknown, was playing in the garden of a property in Le Vernet in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence on Saturday when he went missing.

His family was preparing to go out for the day when they noticed Emile had vanished, François Balique, the mayor of Le Vernet, told local media.

Émile, aged two-and-a-half, was playing in the garden of his grandparent’s house when he vanished on Saturday afternoon.

Since then, a desperate search has been underway to try and find the missing toddler.

But this isn’t the first time that the sleepy village has been struck by tragedy.

Locals speaking to the media have said they are worried their village may be “cursed” as a result of the unfortunate tragedies which have taken place over the last 15 years.

Read the full story by Matt Drake here:

A volunteer who helped in the search for toddler Roxanne, told AFP news agency: “We took part in a big search this morning with 50 other people. There was a gap of two metres (7 feet) between each of us, we looked in the fields, and in the woods.”

“We looked out for the smallest clue, maybe an item of clothing or a shoe he could have lost,” she added.

BFM TV reported that authorities yesterday used a recorded voice message by the toddler’s mother and broadcast it over loudspeakers from a helicopter, in the area of the search.

The local prefect, Marc Chappuis told reporters that “we’re not stopping the search, we are not losing hope”.

He said that the search was now becoming “more targeted” and “more selective”.

Specialist forensic units had been called in and the site was reportedly off limits to outsiders on Tuesday, prosecutor Remy Avon said.

“All possible explanations are on the table, we’re not favouring any, and we’re not ruling any out,” the prosecutor said.