Missing Alex Batty to return to UK from France in days
A British boy found in France six years after he vanished in Spain is due to return to the UK after sending a heartfelt message to his grandmother: “I love you and I want to come home.”
Alex Batty, from Oldham in Lancashire, was 11 when he did not return from a family holiday to Spain with his mother Melanie Batty and grandfather David Batty in 2017.
Alex’s grandmother and official guardian, Susan Caruana, said in 2018 that she believed that her daughter and ex-husband had taken the child after deciding to live an “alternative lifestyle” abroad.
After four days of hiking, Alex was picked up by a delivery driver on Thursday, who helped him send a message to his grandmother on Facebook. It read: “Hello 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.”
The BBC reported that the now 17-year-old was being looked after by social services, awaiting the arrival of British police and consular staff to bring him back to England.
Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said it expects Alex to be returned to his family in the UK over the next few days, in an update on the case at a press conference on Friday morning after speaking with French authorities.
The missing British teenager spoke on a video call with his grandmother on Thursday night, Assistant Chief Constable Chris Sykes said.
“Whilst she is content that this is indeed Alex, we obviously have further checks to do when he returns to the United Kingdom,” he said.
“Our main priority now is to see Alex returned home to his family in the UK and our investigation team are working around the clock with partner agencies and the French authorities to ensure they are all fully supported.”
Speaking from the family home in Oldham on Thursday night, Ms Caruana’s husband Emanuel told the Daily Mail: “We heard yesterday that he had been found. We’re now arranging via the police to see him and hope to in the next few days. We miss him very much. We’ve been hoping, praying he’d be found safe.”
Ms Caruana told The Sun on Friday morning: “I am so happy. I have spoken to him and he is well.
“He is currently with the authorities in France. It is such a shock.
“I don’t know where his mum is. It is great news. I am just waiting for him to come home – I am thrilled.”
Prosecutors in southwest France said they were certain that the boy found in Revel, near Toulouse in south-west France, was Alex.
Alex’s aunt, Maureen Batty, 73, told the Mail: “Alex has been brainwashed by the religion David was in.
“Alex hasn’t had any education while out there, so we don’t know what he’ll be like when he comes home. [He] has had it rough. It is a mess. I’ve just been told that Alex escaped and he didn’t want to lead that lifestyle. I just want to know the truth about what’s gone on.”
Six years after his disappearance, French prosecutors said on Thursday that Alex had been found alive in a mountainous area near Toulouse after escaping from a “spiritual community”. Police believe that the boy, who is now 17, escaped from a rural community in the Pyrenees.
Fabien Accidini, a delivery driver, offered the 17-year-old a lift early on Wednesday morning after spotting him walking alone in the rain with a skateboard under his arm.
Mr Accidini told Sky News that Alex told him he had been living in a luxury house in Spain with about 10 people as part of a “spiritual community” before moving to France around 2021.
He said the teenager “didn’t have regrets [about leaving the community] … he just wanted to live a normal life, to see his grandmother again and to have a normal future, that’s the word that he used”.
La Dépêche, the regional newspaper that covers the area, reported on Thursday: “The Alex Batty mystery is about to be solved.”
Alex flew to Malaga airport in Spain with Melanie and David for a week-long stay in Marbella’s Benahavis area on 30 September 2017.
However, he did not return to Britain on 8 October as planned, sparking a massive police inquiry into the boy’s apparent disappearance.
Alex’s grandmother Susan Caruana said in 2018 that Melanie and David had previously lived on a commune in Morocco with Alex as part of an alternative lifestyle.
“They did not want Alex to go to school, they don’t believe in mainstream school,” she said at the time.
