Manchester authorities announced on Saturday that Alex Patty, the British teenager who disappeared aged 11 while on holiday in Spain with his mother and grandfather in 2017, had returned to the United Kingdom.
“This is certainly an important moment for him and his loved ones and we are delighted that they have seen each other again after such a long time,” Assistant Chief Constable Matt Boyle of Greater Manchester Police told a news conference. He could not comment on the details provided by French authorities, while highlighting that they have not yet questioned the teenager, now 17.
Alex pre-agreed with his guardian and grandmother, Susan Caruana, on September 30, 2017, when they traveled to Marbella, Spain for a two-week vacation with his mother, Melanie, and grandfather, David. The young man was last seen in Malaga harbor on October 8 that year, the day the family was due to return to the United Kingdom.
Over the past few years, Alex has been living an itinerant lifestyle in spiritual communities, traveling through Morocco before ‘settling’ in the Pyrenees valleys in southern France. The teenager decided to run away when her mother offered to move to Finland.
The teenager is thought to have been walking for four days before he was found by a concerned driver who spotted him on a road in the foothills of the Pyrenees on Wednesday morning. It was from the cell phone of this man, Fabian Assidini, that he tried to contact his grandmother.
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