Girl, 9, vanishes from family wedding in French Alps

DIVERS and police dogs backed up by a helicopter took part in a hunt for a missing nine-year-old girl in the French Alps yesterday after she vanished during a family wedding at the weekend.

“We are exploring all leads,” local prosecutor Dietlind Baudoin told a news conference more than 48 hours after the girl, named as Maëlys de Araujo, disappeared.

She has not been seen since around 3am on Sunday when she was at the wedding with her parents and other family members in Le Pont-de-beauvoisin in the French Alps near the town of Chambéry. The party ended with guests frantically searching for Maëlys after the DJ announced that she had disappeared, local reports said.

Colonel Yves Marzin, a regional police chief, said three sniffer dogs lost the scent from Maëlys’s cuddly toy at “the same spot” in a car park at the venue.

“One of the possible theories is that little Maëlys left in a car, one way or another,” Colonel Marzin said.

A source close to the investigation said “each passing hour” makes kidnapping more likely than the possibility that Maëlys was involved in an accident or ran away.

Posters of the chestnut-haired girl with brown eyes have gone up throughout the town and surrounding area and an investigation has now been opened into a possible kidnapping.