French nationwide alarm system successful again after missing girl returned to parents

The policy of triggering emergency bulletins on all radio and TV programmes to sound the alert has worked each of the 14 times enacted

Gendarmes take part in research operations in the area of Grandpre, east of Reims, looking for the alleged kidnapper of 7-year-old girl Berenyss who was abducted on 23 April in Sancy, northeastern France, and found safe 8 hours later in Grandpre, some 120 (AFP PHOTO / FRANCOIS NASCIMBENIFRANCOIS NASCIMBENI/AFP/Getty Images)

A French nationwide alarm system for abducted children appeared once again to have proved its worth when Berenyss, aged 7, was returned unharmed to her parents eight hours after being snatched from a village in eastern France.

For the 14th time in eight years, the French justice ministry triggered emergency bulletins on all radio and TV programmes to sound the alert after the suspicious disappearance of a child. On all previous occasions, the children have been returned alive.

The first bulletins were broadcast six hours after Berenyss disappeared on Thursday afternoon. Two hours later the little girl knocked on the door of a doctor’s house 80 miles from her home.

She said that a “man” had dropped her outside the house and told her that she should ask to telephone her parents. She appeared not be aware she had been abducted.

General Practitioner Marie-Alix Lambert outside her home in Grandpre, on April 24, 2015, where 7-year-old girl Berenyss, who was abducted on April 23 in Sancy, northeastern France, was found safe 8 hours later, some 120 kilometers away. (AFP PHOTO / FRANCOIS NASCIMBENIFRANCOIS NASCIMBENI/AFP/Getty Images)

Medical examinations showed that Berenyss had not been physically or sexually assaulted. She returned to her home in Sancy in Meurthe-et-Moselle with her overjoyed mother and father yesterday.

The local state prosecutor, Yves Le Clair, told the press that the abuction alert had “perhaps” been heard by the kidnapper on his car radio. He had either panicked or thought better of what he had done.

Mr Le Clair said police and gendarmes were looking for a slender man in his 40s’ with short, brown curly hair who was driving a a white Kangoo or similar light van.

The “abuction alert” procedurewas created by the French justice ministry in 2006, based on similar systems already operating in the US and Canada. Only if local searches have been declared fruitless can the nationwide alarm be sounded.

The system was about to be triggered after a 9 years old girl was abducted from a street in Calais last week but her body was found just before bulletins were broadcast. A Polish man who was driving to visit his sister in Britain has confessed to Choe’s murder, police said.

In the case of Berenyss, all ended well – or almost. A gendarme motor-cyclist taking part in the hunt for the seven years old was killed in a road accident on Thursday night.