Clothes found near body of missing boy in French Alps but death remains unexplained

The cause of death of a two-year-old boy who went missing in the French Alps remains unexplained, French prosecutors have said, despite the recent discovery of his bones and clothes.

Emile Soleil disappeared in July last year in the small village of Haut-Vernet on the slopes of the Trois-Evêchés massif.

Last week, forensic tests showed that a skull discovered by a walker near Le Vernet in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence region, about a 25-minute walk away, belonged to the boy.

Some of the clothes Emile was wearing, a T-shirt, shoes and shorts, were also recovered about 150 meters from where the bones were found.

However, prosecutor Jean-Luc Blanchon said the evidence found so far “does not indicate what the cause of Emile's death was.”

“Between a fall, homicide and murder, no hypothesis can be favored over another to explain the death,” he added.

Mr Blanchon said marks were found on the skull that may have been caused by animals after the boy's tragic death.

Two witnesses last saw the boy walking down a street near his grandparents' house, where he had arrived the day before to spend the summer holidays.

A lengthy and extensive search was carried out in the area after the boy's grandparents noticed him missing, but he was not found.

However, two days after a reconstruction of his disappearance last Thursday, a local woman who was walking a little over a kilometer from Haut-Vernet came across some of his remains.

“This heartbreaking news was feared and it is time for mourning, contemplation and prayer,” the child's parents said in a statement.

Questions now remain as to why the boy's skull and clothing were not detected earlier, despite large-scale searches involving drones and sniffer dogs.

A spokeswoman for the French gendarmerie has already admitted that they could have been completely forgotten during last summer's searches, or that they could have been left there by a person or an animal.

Authorities also said those times could have been shifted due to changing weather conditions.