In a remarkable turn of events, a British teenager named Alex Batty, who had been missing for the past six years, was discovered in the mountains of France. In an emotional Facebook message, he reached out to his grandmother for the first time in six years, using the phone of the French man who encountered him while he was wandering in the mountains.
Now 17-year-old Alex Batty is at a young person's centre in Toulouse and could be back in the UK within hours, the prosecutors' office in the city told the BBC.
As per the news story, Alex who is a resident of Oldham, a town in Greater Manchester, was 11 years old when he disappeared after going on holiday with his mother and grandfather in Spain.
A police source earlier told BBC News the boy had been taken to a police station by the concerned motorist who had spotted him on a road in the foothills of the Pyrenees early on Wednesday morning.
The motorist, delivery driver Fabien Accidini, saw Alex walking along a road in the foothills of the Pyrenees in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
"He explained that he had been walking for four days and that he set off from a place in the mountains, though he didn't say where," Mr Accidini said.
"I typed his name into the internet and saw that he was being looked for," he said.
Alex used Mr Accidini's Facebook account to contact his grandmother back in the UK.
He wrote: "Hello Grandma, it's me Alex. I'm in France Toulouse. I really hope that you receive this message. I love you, I want to come home."
A spokesperson for Greater Manchester Police said: "This is a complex and long-running investigation, and we need to make further inquiries as well as put appropriate safeguarding measures in place."
