A “large-scale coordinated operation” is underway in France as part of the investigation into the disappearance of Lina, a 15-year-old girl who has been missing since Saturday, the public prosecutor in the eastern town of Saverne announced on Friday.
The operation is being conducted at “several points in the potential area of Lina’s disappearance,” in the Bas-Rhin department, and “concerns information useful to the investigation that needs to be verified,” Prosecutor Aline Clérot added in a statement.
This operation is being carried out by the Strasbourg research unit and the Bas-Rhin gendarmerie group, the prosecutor said, without giving further details.
“After a seven-day search phase, it is now time for the investigators to verify all the elements they have gathered, whether in terms of numbers or witness accounts, to dig up or close leads,” explained a source close to the investigation.
In particular, a car was searched in Bellefosse, a commune seven kilometres from Saint-Blaise-la-Roche, where Lina disappeared. Technicians in white overalls, wearing masks and gloves, went through a navy blue car with a fine-tooth comb before leaving the scene.
“The inspection of the car in Bellefosse by criminal identification technicians from the Bas-Rhin gendarmerie group is part of these checks but there will be others,” added the source.
“When you’re mayor of a village the size of Bellefosse you know everyone,” the town’s mayor, Alice Morel, said on Friday. She said the car checked by the investigators belonged to “an honourable family.”
“I think it’s normal for the police to carry out searches in neighbouring towns. I stopped to say hello to the person who lives in this house,” she added.
“We are a small mountain village not used to seeing such a gathering and it inevitably creates a bit of a stir,” Morel commented about the checks carried out on Friday morning. “But I think that all the elements need to be analysed and checked to try and find the slightest clue and succeed in solving this unfortunate incident, which affects us all and, beyond that, our whole valley.
"When you’re a parent, you’re doubly concerned to see that in the middle of the day a 15-year-old girl, on a fine day like today, can disappear.”
The teenager disappeared late on Saturday morning after leaving her home to go to Saint-Blaise-la-Roche station, about three kilometres away, a journey she was used to making.
Several searches have been organised since her disappearance but have failed to uncover any conclusive clues in the wooded, rugged area at the foot of the Vosges mountains. At a press conference on Tuesday, the public prosecutor explained that “no leads” had been ruled out in the case.
Between 11.15 and 11.30am on Saturday, two witnesses saw Lina walking along the road towards the station where she was due to catch a train to Strasbourg to meet her boyfriend. When he did not see her arrive, he alerted Lina’s mother, who called the emergency services at around 2.15 p.m.
Examination of CCTV footage in the carriages of the train that Lina was due to take and at Strasbourg station showed that she had not boarded the train.
On her journey on foot, no tracks were found on the carriageway or the roadside suggesting that the teenager had been involved in a road accident, the prosecutor had explained on Tuesday.
She added that there had been no recent or previous incident to support the hypothesis that she had run away and that there had been no banking activity on her account since her disappearance.
Her phone, which was not found, stopped ringing at 11.22 a.m.
The teenager entered a CAP (vocational training certificate) programme for personal assistants this year at a school near Saint-Blaise-la-Roche, some 60 kilometres south-west of Strasbourg. Her parents are separated, and her mother is a nurse.
