A nine-year-old boy who was trapped in his dad’s van for 2 years, malnourished and without access to a rest room, has been rescued.
Neighbour heard ‘sounds of a baby’ coming from a van, near but were initially told it was only a cat.
But officers who broke the vehicle open found the kid ‘lying in a fetal position, naked, covered by a blanket on top of a mound of trash and near excrement,’ in Hagenback, on the Swiss and German borders, on Monday.
In keeping with prosecutor Nicolas Heitz, the daddy, 43, told police that he put his son within the van in November 2024 ‘to guard him’ because his partner, 37, desired to send him to a psychiatric hospital.
He also outlined the conditions his father held him in, telling the kid to urinate in plastic bottles and defecate in bin bags, adding that his last shower was at the tip of 2024.
The kid was visibly malnourished and will now not walk because he had been kept in a seated position for therefore long. He has now been taken to hospital.
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Heitz said the boy had no record of psychiatric issues before his disappearance and that he had good marks in school.
The kid told police that he had ‘big difficulties’ along with his father’s partner and that he thought his dad had ‘no alternative’ aside from to lock him up.
His father was held in police custody on kidnapping charges after his arrest, while the partner denied knowing anything in regards to the boy being within the van.
She was also charged with failing to assist a minor at risk but was released under judicial supervision.
The boy also has a 12-year-old sister, while the partner has a 10-year-old daughter too, who lived in a block of flats with the couple.
Each of them were taken into care by social services.
Family and friends told police they thought the boy was already in a psychiatric institution while his teachers were told he had moved to a brand new school – now detectives are looking into whether other people knew about his imprisonment.
Residents said they heard noises coming from the van but were told it was a cat. One, called Danielle, told reporters it was ‘truly devastating’.
She said: ‘We don’t understand it. It’s horrific, there are not any words.
‘I never once noticed anything, never heard anything … It looks like we’re living in a movie or a dream, and we keep considering, “Tomorrow I’ll get up, and possibly it’s not real.” We just can’t comprehend it.’
The victim and his relatives weren’t named.
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