INGA GEHRICKE

Disappeared: May 2, 2015, from a forest in Saxony-A0nhalt, Germany.

What happened?

The five-year-old from Germany was having an evening barbecue with her family at an apartment complex in the Wilhelmshof district of Stendal when she is believed to have wandered off to collect wood to light a campfire with other children and never returned.

A huge search involving 1,000 people, including firefighters and police officers, was launched but no trace of her was found. Inga, who has blonde hair and blue eyes, was referred to as “the German Maddie” in media reports following her disappearance.

Police said at the time that they suspected that she had been kidnapped. The head of the investigation, Reimar Klockziem, told reporters in Germany that her disappearance was “inexplicable and unbelievable”. It was as if Inga had been “beamed away from the world”, he said.

Where was Christian Brückner?

The year before Inga vanished, Brückner was running a town-centre kiosk in the city of Braunschweig in Germany, around 70 miles away from Saxony-Anhalt. He briefly returned to Portugal in 2015, the year Inga went missing, and sold his camper van.

What’s the connection to Madeleine McCann?

revealed that they are investigating whether Brückner, the prime suspect in the Madeleine case, was also responsible for Inga’s disappearance.

Status of the case:

The probe into Inga’s disappearance was formally dropped in June 2017, but police are now exploring whether Brückner was involved in her disappearance.