The press conference held this Wednesday, April 15 by the public prosecutor of Mulhouse, Nicolas Heitz, helped to shed light on certain gray areas, but there are still some. How was this 9-year-old boy able to live locked up for 18 months in this construction van, at the foot of the family apartment in Hagenbach, without anyone (neighborhood, entourage, social services, National Education) being worried? How could he submit to living 24 hours a day in the vehicle in particularly precarious conditions, in the heatwave in summer, in the freezing cold in winter? Why didn’t he leave when he had the opportunity more than once, notably last summer when his father, his stepmother and the two other children went on vacation? The work of psychiatric experts will undoubtedly provide answers to this form of acceptance of a disastrous fate…
Heard by two specialized investigators, the child testified to an execrable relationship with his stepmother, who wanted him to be taken care of in a psychiatric hospital, and considered that his father would have “had no other choice” than to put him in the van. The boy also indicated that he did not want to go to his mother…
“I’m going through hell, my mother’s heart cries a little more every day”
In a Facebook message that your newspaper was able to obtain, the latter expressed, on August 23, 2024, her distress: “Mickaël, since February [2024]I haven’t seen or heard the children, you are unreachable, the people around you have blocked me… Do you have any idea what it’s like to not know where they are and what they are doing??? Not being able to talk to them, hug them, play my role as a mom!!!! I’m going through hell, my mother’s heart cries a little more every day. So please stop acting ignorant… I need to see them, to feel them, to hold them in my arms and to tell them that for months I have been trying to reach them every day, whether by phone calls or text messages.”
The couple separated in October 2022. In October 2024, the mother submitted a request to the family court judge concerning the organization of the arrangements for exercising parental authority. On May 22, 2025, the magistrate declared that this would be exercised jointly by the two parents and fixed the main residence of the children at the father’s home. “Noting that the mother’s state of health (she would have been confronted with mental health problems, Editor’s note) appeared to be stabilized and that her desire to be involved in the lives of her children was sincere, the judge considered it in their interest to reestablish the mother/child bond under suitable conditions and in a progressive manner,” said the Mulhouse public prosecutor during his press conference. The judge then established visiting rights for the mother with regard to the children for a period of one year within the framework of an associative meeting space, in the presence of professional third parties. » During her hearing at the gendarmerie, the little boy’s mother reportedly indicated that she had contacted the association, in vain, and filed a complaint against the father of her children.
The father explains the suspicious noises by the presence of a cat
The neighborhood investigation and witness interviews confirmed that the boy had “disappeared” overnight. Since the arrival of Mickaël G. and his partner in Hagenbach in March 2024, neighbors had heard noise coming from their home when they were away, and noises emanating from the van. When questioned about this, the father argued that it was a… cat. The woman who raised the alarm had already suspected the presence of a child in the vehicle, and had reported it for the first time a few weeks ago to the gendarmerie… Following her new, insistent call, on Monday April 6, the Dannemarie gendarmes had the van opened. To discover the inconceivable.
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