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He was stuck in a van for over a year“It's horror, there are no words” – now the neighbors of the locked boy speak (9)
Neighbor Lorraine is shocked by the boy's fate
BFM
Nobody noticed anything.
This case from Hagenbach (France) has been making headlines for days. A nine-year-old is found naked, malnourished and lying in his excrement in a minibus. The father is said to have locked him there for more than a year. Now the family's neighbors are speaking.
Neighbors have long believed the noises came from a cat
On Easter Monday (April 6th), the Alsatian police make a horrifying discovery in a village. A little boy, just nine years old, is locked in a van. And that has been the case for more than a year. In town, the father said that his son had been taken into care due to psychological problems. In the small town of Hagenbach, where less than 800 people live, no neighbor noticed the drama that took place just a few meters away from them.
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Danielle, a neighbor of the family, tells the French news agency BFM that she goes in and out of the house every day. “It really hurts us what happened. We don't understand it.” She heard absolutely nothing or noticed anything. “It's horror, there are no words.” Danielle feels like she's living in a movie or dream. “And maybe it’s not true, but we just can’t understand it.”
Darkness, garbage, his own excrement – the child, who had been locked in the van since around November 2024, had to endure all of this. The boy torments himself in his parked dungeon for long months, but eventually neighbors call the police. They can no longer believe the father's statements that “just a cat” was responsible for the noises.
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“These are people I meet often”
Lorraine, another neighbor, is also shocked: “It's disturbing to hear that the little man lived like that in that van, in such uncomfortable conditions.” She hopes that the child will get better soon. Both mentally and physically. “It must be really, really hard for him.”
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Even Francesco would never have imagined such a tragedy in his small town. He knows the family and reports to BFM: “These are people I often meet when I’m walking the dog or walking with my friends.” You greet each other and know each other by sight. “It feels really weird.”
Sources used: BFM
