Portuguese authorities arrested on Thursday evening the mother and stepfather of two young children who had been found wandering alone on a highway in Portugal the previous Tuesday. The 42-year-old woman and her 55-year-old partner were taken into custody “in connection with the incident involving two minor children found alone near a public road in the municipality of Alcácer do Sal,” the national gendarmerie stated in a press release.
According to local media, the couple was arrested after their car was spotted outside a cafe in the town of Fatima, approximately 180 kilometers (112 miles) north of Alcácer do Sal.
According to the BBC, the boys’ father had reported them missing from the family home in Colmar, in eastern France, on May 11.
The two boys, aged 3 and 5, were discovered last Tuesday by a passing driver who initially brought them to the bakery he runs with his family before calling the police. The children were taken to a Lisbon hospital and then to a juvenile care facility, where they are expected to be handed over to the French embassy.
According to the 76-year-old mother of the baker who found them, the family could not understand what the children were saying because they spoke French. They reached out to a friend who speaks the language, and the two brothers recounted what had happened to them. The elderly woman said that the children told them: “They said they arrived by car (with their mother and her partner), got out in a wooded area, a forest, as the older one described. One of the children said they were blindfolded and sent to find a hidden toy. When he took the blindfold off, their mother’s car was no longer there.”
According to French media, authorities in France launched an investigation into “neglect of a minor” on Thursday, May 21, and were searching for the boys’ mother. Relatives of the 42-year-old woman had reported her disappearance, along with that of the two boys, to French authorities as of May 11, according to the prosecutor of Colmar, the northeastern French city where the family had been living until recently, speaking to the BFMTV network.
Portugal’s Judicial Police stated that the two suspects are being investigated on charges of abuse, endangerment, and abandonment of the children.
