In the previous 15 years, Matt Drake and Maanya Sachdeva report, Le Vernet has been the scene of a horrifying fatality and catastrophic plane crash.
Following the disappearance of a young boy this weekend, the French village of Le Vernet in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence has taken centre stage in news reports.
Two-and-a-half-year-old Émile was playing in his grandparents’ backyard on a Saturday when he suddenly vanished. The toddler has been missing for some time, and a desperate search has been underway using helicopters, drones, and sniffer dogs.
Over 1,200 phone calls have been made to a special hotline number, but police still have “no clue” as to Émile’s whereabouts as concerns for his safety grow.
While there is still hope for Émile, this is not the first-time heartbreaking events have shocked the sleepy village.
Locals who spoke to the media expressed concern that their village may be “cursed” while recalling how it was the scene of a horrific murder and a fatal plane crash that claimed 149 lives.
“The village has experienced this kind of tragedy three times,” Christian Mollet said in a statement to La Montagne.
“There was the 2008 murder of Jeannette, the manager of the Moulin café, killed by a customer; the 2015 crash of the company Germanwings, a subsidiary of Lufthansa, with 150 people on board; and then there is this disappearance.”
What is known about Le Vernet’s past is as follows:
killing of a cafe owner in 2008
The villages tranquilly were disturbed in 2008 when Café du Moulin owner Jeanette Grosos was killed by a patron.
François Balique, the mayor at the time, told Provence that “the village will have a hard time recovering from it” at the time of her passing.
Locals claimed that Ms Grosos was regarded as a “local institution”. She met a tragic end when a regular client, well-known in the community, brutally beat her to death.
2015 Airwing disaster
When Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 crashed into the Alps in March 2015, seven years later, it killed everyone on board.
Co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, 28, intentionally brought the Airbus down, according to data from the cockpit flight recorder and other sources.
The flight took off from Barcelona Airport and was heading for Duesseldorf, Germany, with 149 people on board – which is also around the same size as the population of Le Vernet.
The captain once instructed the co-pilot to take over radio communications as he exited the cockpit.
Lubitz changed the flight monitoring system as soon as he left, sending the plane into the descent. Within 10 minutes, the plane had descended at 430 mph into a mountain, instantly killing everyone on board.
The sound of staff trying to enter the cockpit and the screams of the terrified passengers can be heard in the final few minutes of the black box recording. It was later discovered that just two weeks prior to the mishap, the suicidal co-pilot was instructed to seek psychiatric care.
A look at his computer revealed that he had looked up suicide techniques in the months prior to the tragedy.
Due to a “waiver” granted as a result of a prior episode of depression in 2008–2009, the co-pilot was permitted to fly.
According to a report, he was aware that if he informed his employer about his psychiatric issues, this waiver would be revoked, removing his licence.
Le Vernet still has a memorial plaque for the tragedy.
The disappearance of Émile in 2023
On Saturday, July 8, the toddler’s grandparents were getting him ready for the day when they noticed he had disappeared. Teams of searchers are still looking for the young boy five days later.
One local said of the search, “It’s a quiet little hamlet, you feel safe there, much more than in the city.”
Another person said, “Since everyone in this community knows one another, I don’t think a foreigner who went to the top of the village would have gone unnoticed.”
Prefect Marc Chappuis of the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence region announced on Monday that the village would be off-limits to visitors starting on Tuesday morning.
Within a 5 km radius of the location where the child was last seen, “nearly 800 people took turns almost without interruption for two days to try to find the child,” Mr Chappuis told reporters, praising the “neighbours, hikers, walkers, and hunters from the surrounding communes” who “showed an exceptional outpouring of solidarity.”
We don’t require fresh reinforcements, he continued.
