A 17-year-old boy from England who disappeared in Spain in 2017 has been found in France, the authorities confirmed.
The teenager named Alex Batty was found in the town of Revel, which is east of Toulouse, on Wednesday morning.
Six years ago, 11-year-old Alex was on vacation with his mom and grandpa in Spain when they went missing.
A police officer told the media that Alex was brought to a police station by a driver who was worried about him.
The boy said he had been in France for two years, the police source said. The police also said he looked like the last picture of Alex.
He was healthy and said he was not treated badly in any way.
The office in Toulouse said to the media that they can confirm the identity of the missing child. The family said it’s true.
In 2018, Alex’s grandmother, Susan Caruana, said on the BBC that she thought Alex’s mom and grandpa had taken him to live with a spiritual group in Morocco. She also takes care of him legally.
She said they wanted a different way of living and didn’t want Alex to attend school.
A reporter in the area told the media that a delivery driver saw the boy walking with a backpack and skateboard in the mountains and felt bad for him, so he gave him a ride.
Remi Buhagiar from La Depeche newspaper said that the boy and the person spent three hours in the car and the boy shared his story.
“He said he had been living in a traveling community where people move from place to place. ” He didn’t have to, but he thought his mother was strange and didn’t want to live like that. He wanted to do his own thing, so he left.
Alex walked through the hills for many days, Mr Buhagiar said.
“I don’t know if she received the message,” he said.
Many people are drawn to the area near the Pyrenees mountains because they want to live in different ways.
The British police have been reached out to through the embassy in Paris.