“A huge relief”: Morgane, a 13-year-old schoolgirl who disappeared on November 25 in Côtes-d'Armor, was found alive Tuesday morning in a young workers' home in Coutances (Manche) and a man who sheltered her was placed in custody.
“The missing child was able to be located in Coutances” and was found Tuesday morning by the gendarmes of the Rennes research section, specifies the public prosecutor of Saint-Brieuc, Nicolas Heitz, in a press release.
The Côtes d'Armor gendarmerie indicated on Facebook that the teenager is “in good health”.
“Morgan is doing well physically” and has not yet given an explanation for her disappearance, a source close to the case told AFP, without being able to give any indication of the schoolgirl's psychological state.
The teenager “will be quickly examined by a doctor and will be interviewed by the investigators”, specifies Nicolas Heitz.
“She was in a hostel for young workers (FJT) in this city (…) The person who accommodated her, a 21-year-old native of Rennes, was immediately placed in police custody on the charge of arrest , kidnapping, sequestration of a minor under the age of fifteen”, underlines the Saint-Brieuc prosecutor.
In front of the FJT located in the Claires-Fontaines district, on the outskirts of Coutances, no one had seen anything or heard anything on Tuesday.
While most explained that you had to show your credentials to enter and stay in this home – declare your guests and submit an identity document – Sirog, in his twenties, a former resident, affirmed that it was “easy to get in.” bring someone without the guards knowing, if the guy wanted to hide the girl there, it wasn't complicated.”
800 volunteers
The mayor of Coutances, Jean-Dominique Bourdin, expressed to the press a “great relief” for the young girl's loved ones.
The mayor of Pabu, where the teenager comes from, also spoke of “an immense relief”. “We were very worried (…) we came to imagine the worst (…) We did not understand why she had left,” Pierre Salliou told the press at the town hall.
The Saint-Brieuc prosecutor announced “a detailed press briefing” on Wednesday at 6:00 p.m.
Last week, Mr. Heitz said he was considering “all avenues” to find the teenager, who seemed to make excessive use of social networks where she had entered into “relationships with older individuals”.
The investigation mobilized “70 gendarmes, a judicial group of 22 investigators”, with “more than 110 hearings carried out and more than 1,000 people questioned”, specified the national gendarmerie on X.
A 21-year-old man, residing in Drôme, was notably identified as having created a Snapchat account in the name of Morgane. Several images of a child pornography nature not concerning the teenager were discovered there and the man was placed in police custody for these facts, by the competent public prosecutor's office, the magistrate said.
It was also over Morgane's use of social networks that she argued with her parents the weekend before her disappearance. His father had broken his phone and confiscated his SIM card.
The young 4th grade student left her home on Monday, November 25 at 7:14 a.m. but she never arrived at her school, which quickly informed her parents.
According to several of her friends, the young girl, who had never run away, had “posted a story, since deleted, over the weekend to say that she would not come to class on Monday”. The investigators had found in his basket a “crumpled paper which said ‘dad, mum, sorry, I’m leaving’”.
Having left without a bank card, money or spare belongings, Morgane had not taken the school bus she usually took to go to college, established the investigation, which mobilized several dozen gendarmes from Guingamp and the Rennes research section.
Road checks, door-to-door, drone, helicopter: the investigations gave rise to an impressive deployment of resources to find the teenager, including a search bringing together some 800 volunteers.
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