French authorities have reported that a 17-year-old English boy, named Alex Batty, who went missing in Spain in 2017, has been discovered in France.
Found in the town of Revel, east of Toulouse, early on Wednesday morning, Alex, who was 11 at the time of his disappearance, was on vacation with his mother and grandfather in Spain.
According to BBC reports citing a police source, a concerned motorist took Alex to a police station after encountering him.
The source mentioned that the boy claimed to have been in France for two years and bore a resemblance to the last known picture of Alex.
Fortunately, he appeared to be in good health and didn’t report any mistreatment.
Confirming his identity, the prosecutor’s office in Toulouse stated, “It is the missing child. The family have confirmed it.”
Alex’s grandmother and legal guardian, Susan Caruana, previously informed the BBC in 2018 that she believed Alex’s mother and grandfather had taken him to live with a spiritual community in Morocco, seeking an alternative lifestyle without formal schooling.
A local journalist shared with the BBC that a delivery driver had noticed the boy walking along a road in the Pyrenees’ foothills, carrying a backpack and skateboard. Moved by sympathy, the driver picked him up.
“They spent three hours together in the car, and the boy told his story,” Remi Buhagiar of La Depeche newspaper said.
“He said he’d been living in a kind of itinerant commune. He wasn’t under any compulsion but he said he found his mother a bit weird and decided he didn’t want this kind of life, and that he wanted to set his own path – that’s why he decided to leave,” he added.
Alex had been walking through the hills for days, Buhagiar disclosed, saying, “He asked the driver if he could borrow his phone and sent a message via Facebook to his grandmother, saying he was fine and wanted to see her. He was not sure if she got the message,” he said.
Social services are currently providing care for the boy, and the British authorities have been informed through the embassy in Paris.
