Man Charged Over Disappearance Of 9 Y.O. Girl From French Alps Wedding

A 34-year-old man has been handed preliminary kidnapping charges by French authorities over the disappearance of Maelys de Araujo, a nine-year-old girl who went missing at a wedding in the French Alps.

Prosecutors claim that the man attended the same wedding last month, and that he was one of two men detained and released without charge last week.

Some corners of the French media are reporting that traces of the girl’s DNA were found in his car. The defendant’s lawyer, Bernard Meraud, told French TV that the only reason DNA would have been found in his client’s car was that de Araujo was playing in the vehicle at an earlier point.

“His dogs were mentioned during the party so the children, as they were playing outside, came to him and asked to see his dogs in his car,” Meraud told BFMTV.

“He opened the door, turned over the passenger front seat, the children went on the back seat, looked inside the boot and came out. That’s it.”

de Araujo is still missing as of today. Police have questioned more than 200 potential witnesses and conducted an extensive search of the area around the village hall in Pont-de-Beauvoisin, 85 kilometres from Lyon in southeastern France.

Reportedly, police dogs lost the girl’s scent in the hall’s carpark, which suggests she may have either entered a vehicle or was forced into one.

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