Boy reported missing six years ago in Britain found walking alone in rain on French road

LE PECQ, France — A six-year-long missing child case has come to an end after the teen was found alive and walking alone on a highway in France.

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Alex Batty was declared missing when he was 11 years old, The Associated Press reported.

It all started when his mother and grandfather said they were taking him on a short trip to Spain from Britain in 2017.

Batty, who is now 17, told investigators that he, his mother and his grandfather lived like nomads in Morocco, Spain and eventually France.

They lived off the grid, using solar panels for electricity and growing their own food, moving from family to family in a “spiritual community,” officials said this week.

Batty was found walking in the rain, alone by a delivery driver early Wednesday morning. He was carrying a rucksack and a skateboard under his arm.

“I said to myself, ‘That’s strange. It’s 3 am in the morning, it’s raining, he’s all by himself on the road between two villages,” Fabien Accidini said, according to the AP.

Accidini told French television station BFMTV that Batty was tired, so he took Accidini up on an offer for a ride. They rode together as the older man finished his deliveries. Once Batty got comfortable with Accidini, he said that the teen told him his real name and then explained that his mother had kidnapped him years ago and they had lived in France for the past two years in a “spiritual community that was a bit strange with his mother who is also a bit strange, a bit loopy,” the AP reported.

Batty told investigators that his mother was moving again, this time to Finland, and that he didn’t want to go, so he was on his own.

“When his mother indicated that she intended to leave for Finland with him, this young man understood that this journey had to stop,” prosecutor Antoine Leroy said.

“He was relieved to leave, to return to England, to see his grandmother again because he didn’t want to live his whole life in that community,” Accidini said, according to CNN. “He wanted to have a real life with a real future.”

Eventually, the teen texted his grandmother, writing, “Hello grandma it is me Alex i am in France Toulouse i really hope that you receive this message i love you i want to come home,” BFM and the AP reported.

The grandmother is the teen’s legal guardian and the two spoke via video call on Thursday evening, according to Reuters.

Batty’s mother “did not have legal parental guardianship” of him, CNN reported, citing a police statement from 2019.

Officials said the teen’s grandfather may have died about six months ago and that his mother has probably left for her next country. Still, British police are looking for them in connection with Batty’s disappearance, Reuters reported.

He had walked for four nights, while he rested during the day and ate “different things that he found in fields or gardens,” Leroy said.

Batty is expected to return to England in a couple of days, Reuters reported.