British teen Alex Batty, who was found this week in France after he went missing six years ago while on vacation, has arrived back in the UK, police said on Saturday.
Batty never returned from that trip in 2017, when he was just 11 years old, but resurfaced in the middle of the night last week when a driver picked him up along a mountainous area of southern France.
“It gives me great pleasure to say Alex has now made his safe return back to the UK after six years,” Greater Manchester Police Assistant Chief Constable Matt Boyle told reporters at the force’s headquarters.
Photo: Reuters
Now 17, Batty is to be returned to his maternal grandmother, whom the British justice system had entrusted with his custody before his mother abducted him.
“I can’t wait to see him when we’re reunited,” his grandmother Susan Caruana — who according to British media reports remains his legal guardian — said in a statement released by Greater Manchester Police.
“The main thing is that he’s safe, after what would be an overwhelming experience for anyone, not least a child,” she said.
Batty’s mother, Melanie Batty, has yet to be found but could be in Finland, Toulouse assistant prosecutor Antoine Leroy said earlier.
For the past six years, including two in France, Alex Batty has lived a “nomadic” life in a “spiritual community,” never staying more than several months in the same place, he told investigators.
The teen was found by a delivery driver after he had walked for four days, the deputy prosecutor told a news conference on Friday evening.
He is in good health and does not appear to have been abused in the years since his abduction, a doctor who examined him said.
Alex Batty told investigators that he had not suffered any physical violence during the past six years.
Earlier on Saturday, the 17-year-old boarded a KLM flight in Toulouse, headed to London via Amsterdam.
He was accompanied by British police officers and a family member, the force said.
Leroy on Friday said that the teenager had decided to escape when his mother announced she was going to Finland, where she is “likely” to be now.
The teenager told French investigators they had spent time in Morocco before moving to the French Pyrenees, along the border with Spain.
Alex Batty also told investigators that he had spent time in a spiritual community center focused on “work on the ego, meditation and reincarnation,” the prosecutor said.
He had been walking along the road by night to avoid detection, foraging food from gardens and fields along the way.
A student working as a delivery driver, Fabien Accidini, picked him up between two villages in the pouring rain in the early hours of Thursday morning.
“He clearly needed help,” Accidini said, and since Alex Batty did not speak French well, he spoke to him in English.
“He was a bit suspicious at first,” he added, initially giving a false name, but as the boy helped him with his deliveries to local pharmacies, he began to open up.
“When he told me he’d been abducted, I made him say it again — it was crazy,” Accidini said.
He lent his cellphone so that Alex Batty could contact his grandmother in England on Facebook to tell her he wanted to come home, and then he got in touch with the police.
While they were waiting for the officers to arrive, Accidini searched online and found a photograph of the missing blond schoolboy.
“I typed in his first and last name and saw his photo, which was the same as his face today at 17,” he said.
Alex Batty told him he hoped to go back to school and study to become an engineer, he added.
“He had a good head on his shoulders,” Accidini said. “He knew that where he was was not real life — and that he didn’t want that life in the future.”
Seven people sustained mostly minor injuries in an airplane fire in South Korea, authorities said yesterday, with local media suggesting the blaze might have been caused by a portable battery stored in the overhead bin. The Air Busan plane, an Airbus A321, was set to fly to Hong Kong from Gimhae International Airport in southeastern Busan, but caught fire in the rear section on Tuesday night, the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. A total of 169 passengers and seven flight attendants and staff were evacuated down inflatable slides, it said. Authorities initially reported three injuries, but revised the number
‘BALD-FACED LIE’: The woman is accused of administering non-prescribed drugs to the one-year-old and filmed the toddler’s distress to solicit donations online A social media influencer accused of filming the torture of her baby to gain money allegedly manufactured symptoms causing the toddler to have brain surgery, a magistrate has heard. The 34-year-old Queensland woman is charged with torturing an infant and posting videos of the little girl online to build a social media following and solicit donations. A decision on her bail application in a Brisbane court was yesterday postponed after the magistrate opted to take more time before making a decision in an effort “not to be overwhelmed” by the nature of allegations “so offensive to right-thinking people.” The Sunshine Coast woman —
BORDER SERVICES: With the US-funded International Rescue Committee telling clinics to shut by tomorrow, Burmese refugees face sudden discharge from Thai hospitals Healthcare centers serving tens of thousands of refugees on the Thai-Myanmar border have been ordered shut after US President Donald Trump froze most foreign aid last week, forcing Thai officials to transport the sickest patients to other facilities. The International Rescue Committee (IRC), which funds the clinics with US support, told the facilities to shut by tomorrow, a local official and two camp committee members said. The IRC did not respond to a request for comment. Trump last week paused development assistance from the US Agency for International Development for 90 days to assess compatibility with his “America First” policy. The freeze has thrown
TESTING BAN: Satellite photos show a facility in the Chinese city of Mianyang that could aid nuclear weapons design and power generation, a US researcher said China appears to be building a large laser-ignited fusion research center in the southwestern city of Mianyang, experts at two analytical organizations said, a development that could aid nuclear weapons design and work exploring power generation. Satellite photos show four outlying “arms” that would house laser bays, and a central experiment bay that would hold a target chamber containing hydrogen isotopes the powerful lasers would fuse together, producing energy, said Decker Eveleth, a researcher at US-based independent research organization CNA Corp. It is a similar layout to the US$3.5 billion US National Ignition Facility (NIF) in northern California, which in 2022 generated
RSS