“The child’s mother was taken into police custody, given the findings of the technical and scientific police in the family apartment”, the public prosecutor of Marseille Dominique Lawrence, still told AFP after two hours.
According to his uncle and aunt, who spoke to AFP in the popular Caplet district in the afternoon, the autistic child escaped his mother’s supervision during a walk around 4:00pm on Friday.
According to Ms. Lawrence, the mother reported her child missing on Friday.
Two caveats
The child’s uncle and aunt told AFP that the family had first reported to the police station around 5:00 p.m., and then again at 10:00 p.m., their search still unsuccessful.
The body was found by the child’s father and uncle, Ms Lawrence insisted, noting that the investigation had been handed over to the judicial police.
The family told AFP they first found the child’s jacket on the banks of the Huveaune at 8:30 a.m. Saturday, and finally at 1:00 p.m., still on the river bank, around a hundred people found the body. meters away, in tall grass and brush, on a steep slope overlooking the water.
“If only they’d come sooner…”
The body contained “stab wounds”, the prosecutor told AFP, and spoke of “several traces of blood on the way to find the body”.
In pictures taken by the uncle on his mobile phone, AFP could see the baby, clothed, lying on his side, his face turned towards the brushwood, blood on one arm and stomach. Yet according to the uncle, firefighters would have advised the family to leave, as the child’s face was “damaged”.
“We immediately went to see the police,” the aunt told AFP again on Saturday: “When it’s an autistic child like him, we don’t leave the parents like that, we go on a patrol to search,” she continued. .
“If they had come earlier… then I don’t know what would have changed,” she said angrily. A few minutes later, the aunt immediately burst into tears when she learned that the mother had been taken into police custody.
The uncle, aunt and two neighbors of the family assured AFP that they searched for the child until 3am.
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