A good week after the disappearance of six-year-old Arian from Bremervörde in northern Lower Saxony, investigators will stop the active search on Tuesday. “We will no longer be on site here from tomorrow,” said a police spokesman on Monday evening. However, an investigative team will continue to work on the case. Hundreds of emergency services and volunteers had been looking for the autistic boy since April 22nd. “We would have liked a completely different ending.”
Previously, several riot police squads had once again combed the region for the autistic boy on Monday – without success. Arian’s father reported the child’s disappearance on Monday evening last week. A surveillance camera recorded the boy running into a neighboring forest. The police say they have no evidence of a crime, but are investigating in all directions.
On Monday, the police set up a new investigation group with experts in missing person cases who will continue to work on the case. A five-person team in Zeven is now coordinating the procedure, it said. Instead of continuing to search the area, the emergency services will only follow up on specific clues in the future. “We don’t have any more events at the moment,” admitted the spokesman.
Race against time
In the past few days, the emergency services have searched 5,300 hectares on land, water and from the air – the equivalent of an area of more than 7,500 football fields. Around 800 people searched every day, including many special forces with dogs, horses, helicopters, drones, tornado planes, amphibious vehicles, boats and diving equipment. “We wanted to do everything humanly possible to find Arian and, ideally, bring him home,” said the police spokesman.
As recently as Monday afternoon, the police had announced: “The aim of the continued measures is and remains the finding of Arian.” The search was a race against time, and optimism was fading. “At some point, I think many people become a little bit more realistic,” the spokesman said in the afternoon. “And you can’t close your eyes to that.”
Early on Monday evening we finally came to the realization: “We were almost about to promise that we would find him, and we couldn’t keep that,” said the police spokesman. The moment had come when searching the area no longer made any sense.
1.5 kilometer long human chain
The weekend’s largest search operation to date, on which so many hopes rested, failed to produce any breakthrough. According to their own statements, the investigators found footprints. But whether they actually came from Arian remained unclear. Dogs were unable to track him down, and divers and drones also failed to track down the six-year-old. More than 2,000 emergency services from various organizations took part in the search in Bremervörde-Elm and the surrounding area over the weekend. The boy’s hometown is in the Rotenburg (Wümme) district between Bremerhaven and Hamburg.
On Saturday the search focused again on the Oste, a tributary of the Elbe. Emergency services traveled on the river with so-called sonar boats. On land, helpers walked the river. Additional emergency services combed the area between Elm and the municipality of Oldendorf. The Technical Relief Agency (THW) and the fire department searched ditches and pipes in them.
The search area, which was previously focused on the Elm area, was expanded on Sunday. Around 1,200 people were deployed. “We threw everything into the balance again yesterday,” the police spokesman assured on Monday. A 1.5 kilometer long human chain combed the area north of the place of residence and “turned over every stone”. The search lasted until nightfall and around 15 square kilometers were searched. In addition, there were once again boats and, for the first time, a cavalry relay. “And at the end of the day we were left empty-handed. And that makes us incredibly sad.”
Children’s songs played when searching
The emergency services tried for days to empathize with the autistic boy and tailor the search to his needs. In coordination with the “Autism Advisory Service”, they tried to attract the boy with children’s songs, balloons and fireworks – without success. Since Saturday night, people have been looking for him quietly so as not to scare him away.
According to an expert, as he is autistic he would not be able to respond to calls. It could be that, unlike his peers, Arian is not afraid of the dark forest. “Maybe his autism is an advantage, it also has something to do with us as emergency services,” said the police spokesman on Monday afternoon. The boy might be more resilient than other children his age. “We try to think positively.”
Since Monday evening, the Bremervörde police have been searching for a missing boy with a large contingent of emergency services. 6-year-old Arian Arnold was last seen at his home on Ohfeldring Street in Elm around 7:30 p.m.
The police spokesman emphasized on Monday that the chances of survival vary greatly from person to person. There are comparable cases of missing children who were found alive after more than a week. An example is an eight-year-old from Oldenburg who was missing for days. Two years ago, the mentally disabled child got lost in a sewer system. After eight days of searching, a walker heard a quiet whimper coming from a manhole cover – just a few hundred meters from the child’s parents’ house. The boy was rescued unharmed.
In Adrian’s case, investigators are continuing to communicate with his family and are coordinating all measures with them, it was said on Monday. The family is being closely looked after by the emergency pastoral care, police and relatives.
(agencies, sif)
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