Held prisoner in an apartment after running away, the 14-year-old girl managed to alert her relatives through her social networks.
Thanks to the presence of mind of a young policewoman and her knowledge of Snapchat, this teenager was able to escape her ordeal. On January 15, a 14-year-old girl was able to be extracted from the apartment in which she was forcibly retained by several individuals thanks to the social network’s location system.
The case was relayed by our colleagues from France Bleu Marseille. It all started on January 10, 2022 when the young girl did not show up at Annonay college (Ardeche) where her foster family had just dropped her off. The teenager has already run away in the past, because she is trying to make contact with her biological mother who lives in Lyon.
The gendarmes of the Rhône and the Ardèche then work together to find the teenager. Finally, the young girl manages to exchange a few messages with her mother. She tells him that she is being held in an apartment that she cannot locate. She says she is a victim of sexual violence and allegedly drugged. She also indicates that she cannot speak out loud so as not to attract the attention of her captors.
It is finally a police officer who has the idea to ask the teenager if she has a Snapchat account. Thanks to the location option of the latter, the investigators manage to determine that the young girl is Marseille, in a building in the 15th arrondissement of Marseille.
An important first step, but the building is large and has a lot of apartments. Here again, the field experience of the police will speak. They have the idea of knocking on all the doors asking the girl to answer them via text message when they knock on the right door. Finally, the right apartment is located and inside, two men aged 27 and 64 are arrested and the young girl found. When officers arrived, one of the suspects attempted to delete videos on his phone believed to be related to the teen’s abuse. The suspects were taken into custody.
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