Wedding Guest Arrested After 9-Year-Old Girl Goes Missing In French Alps

A man was arrested Thursday in connection with the disappearance of a 9-year-old girl from a wedding in the French Alps over the weekend. Maelys de Araujo was last seen in a children’s room at the wedding venue in Le Pont de Beauvoisin in southeast France around 3 a.m. Sunday.

Authorities launched a kidnapping investigation Tuesday and were scouring the area with the help of volunteers, dogs and police divers. They had interviewed some 250 guests present in the area on the night of Maelys’ disappearance.

Police arrested an unidentified 34-year-old man in connection to the case, according to Metro UK. The man was present at the wedding the night Maelys went missing and had given an inconsistent account of his actions that night, the Independent reported. Dietlind Baudoin, the prosecutor in the case, warned against jumping to hasty conclusions and said the police wanted to discern the exact whereabouts of a person who left the party around the time the girl went missing, according to the Associated Press.

Guests realized Maelys was missing at around 3 a.m. when the DJ announced the girl could not be found. Party goers, who initially thought the girl had gotten lost or was sleeping somewhere, launched an hour long search and called police when they failed to turn up any trace of her.

“The DJ for the evening announced on the microphone that a child had disappeared,” a guest named Gregoire told French news outlet Le Parisien. “Suddenly, everyone started searching, in the main hall and outside. It was anguish. To see the disappearance of a 9-year-old, that’s not nothing. We initially thought she must be asleep in a corner after a game of hide and seek. After an hour, as we’d found nothing, the police were alerted.”

Upon arrival, authorities deployed police dogs to track Maelys’ scent using one of her toys. The dogs were able to track the smell to the parking lot where it disappeared. Based on that, the police surmised she may have been taken from the venue in a car, regional police chief Yves Marzin said.

“Given the time that has elapsed since the disappearance of young Maelys and given the resources that have been sadly deployed in vain to find her, the criminal possibility can no longer be ruled out,” prosecutor Baudoin said at a press conference.