An undated photo of Alex Batty before he went missing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A British boy who disappeared six years ago is set to return home in the coming days after a driver discovered him walking along a roadside in southern France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alex Batty has not been seen since he was 11 years old, after being taken on holiday in Spain in 2017 with his mother, \u201cwho did not have legal parental guardianship,\u201d and his grandad, according to a police appeal released in February 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Batty, now aged 17, was found in Haute-Garonne, near the city of Toulouse, a spokesperson for regional authorities said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
British police say they do not have details on where Batty spent the past six years, but Fabien Accidini, a French motorist who rescued Batty from the side of the road, said the boy had been living in France for the past two years \u201cin a spiritual community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Accidini said Batty told him he was \u201ckidnapped by his mother\u201d in 2017, before spending three years in Spain and two years in France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe told me he was kidnapped by his mother five years ago in Morocco. After that he was in Spain. And that he had been living France for the past two years in a spiritual community,\u201d Accidini said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Accidini, Batty described his mother as a \u201cbit crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Accidini, a chiropractic student, had been delivering medicines to pharmacies overnight when he first came across Batty. After initially giving him a false name, Batty spoke to Accidini for three hours in English and French.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He saw Batty walking along the side of a road with a skateboard, a jacket, a backpack and a flashlight, according to French broadcaster TF1. He said it was raining when he found him and stopped because he was intrigued by what the boy was doing by the road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe told me that it had been four days that he was walking since he had left the mountains, he didn\u2019t know where,\u201d Fabien Accidini told reporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe was relieved to leave, to return to England, to see his grandmother again because he didn\u2019t want to live his whole life in that community,\u201d Accidini said. \u201cHe wanted to have a real life with a real future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The family has confirmed the teenager\u2019s identity and that he is due to return to England shortly, according to the Toulouse public prosecutor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assistant Chief Constable for Greater Manchester Police, Chris Sykes, said \u201cour priority is to get him back to the UK as soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sykes told journalists that he expects Batty to return to his family\u2019s home in northern England \u201cover the next few days.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He stressed that British police have \u201cno detail\u201d on Batty\u2019s whereabouts for the past six years, adding that officers \u201cneed to speak\u201d to him to \u201cestablish the full facts when he\u2019s ready.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Batty\u2019s grandmother, Susan Caruana, his legal guardian, told the UK\u2019s The Sun newspaper that she had spoken to Alex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI am so happy. I have spoken to him and he is well,\u201d Caruana said, adding: \u201cHe is currently with the authorities in France. It is such a shock.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the TF1 report, Accidini showed a message sent on Wednesday at 3:29 a.m. local time (9:29 p.m. ET), that Batty reportedly sent to his grandmother from the Frenchman\u2019s Facebook account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The message read: \u201cHello grandma it is me Alex i am in France Toulouse i really hope that you receive this message i love you i want to come home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Greater Manchester Police in the United Kingdom said in a statement Thursday that they have been contacted regarding \u201ca possible sighting in France of Alex Batty, who went missing in 2017.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Officers in the English town of Oldham are in contact with French authorities to establish the \u201cauthenticity of the report,\u201d the police added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A spokesperson for Greater Manchester Police said: \u201cThis is a complex and long-running investigation, and we need to make further enquiries as well as putting appropriate safeguarding measures in place.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An undated photo of Alex Batty before he went missing. A British boy who disappeared six years ago is set to return home in the coming days after a driver discovered him walking along a roadside in southern France. Alex Batty has not been seen since he was 11 years old, after being taken on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-international"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.funminews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/231214162840-alex-batty-file.webp?fit=1160%2C653&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12923"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12927,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12923\/revisions\/12927"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}