DISAPPEARANCE OF MAËLYS: IN PONT-DE-BEAUVOISIN, THE LOCAL PEOPLE 'STILL CANNOT COMPREHEND WHAT HAPPENED'
20Minutes
http://www.20minutes.fr/lyon/213900...-habitants-arrivent-toujours-comprendre-passe
One month since the investigators are trying to find out where little Maëlys is. One month since the girl was abducted at a wedding party she attended. In the small village of Pont-de-Beauvoisin, wedged between the departments of Isère and Savoie, where the drama happened, the child is still on everyone's mind. Her face still adorns shop windows. And the mystery surrounding her disappearance remains one of the main topics of conversation.
"The more the weeks go by, the less hope of finding her alive again," according to Olivier, manager of a restaurant-bar. His wife had noticed a few days ago that the search notice they had posted was no longer there. "We put it back on. It's more out of solidarity with her family than to move the investigation forward. It's a way of saying that we mustn't forget this child. We can't afford to become insensitive," Elizabeth adds.
Nathalie, one of the village's shopkeepers, admits that she "often thinks about it at night".
Today, she says she is "torn between the two", between "hope of finding her" and resignation. "When we first heard the helicopter above the house, we thought it was a fugitive. We never imagined for a moment that it could concern a child," she adds. The 50-year-old and her daughter spontaneously searched the woods near her house, sometimes lifting up the stacks of branches to check if the girl was not there.
Even if the weeks go by, Nathalie "stays on the lookout". "I still have the reflex to look at the slopes or the sides when I'm driving my car," she confesses. She says: "It's always on my mind. We still cannot understand what happened."
"You can feel that people are sad. It doesn't have an impact on their lives, but we can see that they are worried about it," Didier confirms. He is a stallholder from Lyon who has a stand once a week in the village market. "They talk about it a lot. This is a quiet place. In 30 years, they've never seen anything like it."
"It's a nasty affair," says Jean-Louis, manager of a coffee shop. He also keeps the search notices on the windows of his establishment. "Unfortunately, it doesn't change anything," the man continues. Nevertheless he cannot decide to remove them. "This story gives me the creeps. As for the suspect [Nordahl Lelandais], to know if it is him or not... a lot of things point at him but the investigators have nothing tangible against him."
"If it's him, he won't say anything. We will never know anything unless they find the child, alive or not," Jeremy joins in, sitting at a terrace. For Aïssa, Maëlys' disappearance is "a catastrophe". "We're all still in shock," he explains," because we know the suspect. We met him every day. We're in contact with him. He went to school with my kids. My wife was also looking after him at the school's daycare." But there's no question of taking his side.
He too is convinced that NL is going to keep silent.
"We know his character. He didn't always have a good reputation. We heard about him as someone who had a changeable, sometimes aggressive mood. We could see him passing through the village. He didn't talk to anyone and he kept going.
"Knowing that the suspect comes from a small, neighboring village where everyone is inconspicuous is scary," according to Olivier. "The place has a peaceful and good-natured atmosphere. You can't imagine a monster like that coming out of it."
"He must be mentally strong.
I don't think he will speak anytime soon either," Nathalie says with regret, she is convinced of Nordahl Lelandais's involvement: "If at least his relatives and his mother could encourage him to say what he knows. The hardest part is not knowing where Maëlys is today. We'd like to help her family so much. But in the end we feel totally powerless..."
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