A 17-year-old English boy who disappeared in Spain more than six years ago, has been found in France, authorities say.
Alex Batty, from Oldham in Greater Manchester, went on holiday to southern Spain with his mother and grandfather in September 2017.
Police said the then-11-year-old was due back a little more than a week later but never returned, leaving his grandmother Susan Caruana, who is his legal guardian, distraught.
A French student said he spotted the boy on Wednesday walking along the road in the rain, carrying a skateboard and a torch, in a town outside of Toulouse.
Fabien Accidini told local newspaper La Depeche he offered to give the boy a lift, after which they spoke for three hours. Alex told him he’d been walking in the mountains for four days after leaving the itinerant community where he’d been living with his mother.
The public prosecutor in Toulouse told multiple French and UK outlets that it was the missing child.
Samuel Vuelta-Simon said the boy’s family, and photos, confirmed the link and he should be back in England soon.
Greater Manchester Police confirmed it had been contacted about a “possible sighting” and Oldham officers were speaking to French authorities to confirm its authenticity.
“This is a complex and long-running investigation, and we need to make further enquiries as well as putting appropriate safeguarding measures in place,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
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Police had claimed Alex’s mother, Melanie Batty, and grandfather David Batty might have taken him from Benahavis, where they’d been holidaying near Malaga, to Morocco.
But international searches and cooperation with Spanish authorities failed to find the boy.
In 2019, Caruana told the BBC she believed her daughter had taken him to a commune in pursuit of an “alternative lifestyle” because she had a “different belief system”.
“They didn’t want him to go to school, they don’t believe in mainstream school,” she said.
Accidini showed La Depeche a Facebook message Alex had sent Caruana from his account but she hadn’t responded.
He said Alex told him he had no animosity towards his mother but missed his loved ones in the UK and wanted to find his grandmother.
