Alex Batty: France finds British boy missing since 2017

Alex Batty, a teenager from Britain who disappeared six years ago has been found in southern France, local authorities said on Thursday, fleeing a spiritualist mountain community according to a driver who crossed paths with him and informed police.

His family has confirmed his identity as Alex Batty, originally from Greater Manchester, the local prosecution office told Reuters.

“He should soon be returning to England,” a spokesperson from the Toulouse public prosecution office said, adding that the criminal investigation into Batty’s disappearance is being led by British authorities.

Batty – then 11 years old – had disappeared during a trip with his mother and grandfather to Malaga, Spain, in 2017.

“He told me he had been marching for four days after he set off from the mountains”, Fabien Accidini, a delivery driver who spotted the teenager wandering along a highway in the region around the southern city of Toulouse, told newspaper La Depeche.

The paper first reported about Alex Batty’s resurfacing. It said the teenager had lived among a spiritual community in the Pyrenees mountains, known for being a destination for escapists from across Europe in pursuit of an alternative way of life.

The whereabouts of Alex Batty’s mother, who had vanished with her son in 2017, were still unknown.

“He told me his mother was a little, not crazy but having a somewhat bizarre spiritual mindset, …, staying in the mountains with a group of people”, Accidini said, adding:

“He did not appear to have been miserable to live there, but he was very happy to have left.”

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) told a press conference on Friday they were working with the French authorities to bring Batty back to Britain, and to his grandmother, who British media have reported was his legal guardian.

“He’s getting well cared for by the French authorities at the moment … Our priority is to get him back to the UK and get him back to his family in Oldham as soon as possible, that is expected to happen over the next few days,” GMP Assistant Chief Constable Chris Sykes told a press conference.