Thursday July 29 at 6.30 p.m., the operations and intelligence center of the gendarmerie (CORG) is called following the disturbing disappearance of a 15-year-old teenager with autism, in the town of Saint-Paul -de-Jarrat, in Ariège (Occitanie).
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An hour after noticing her absence, her parents had gone looking for her, but to no avail. Five hours after the teenager's disappearance, they decided to contact the gendarmerie. Immediately informed, the operations and intelligence center of the gendarmerie sends soldiers from the Autonomous Territorial Brigade (BTA) of Tarascon-sur-Ariège to assess the situation.
The communal forest of Saint-Paul-de-Jarrat, spreading over approximately 4.23 square kilometers, is heavily wooded, making searches complicated.
The BTA then asked for reinforcements and members of the brigade arrived to lend a hand.
A surveillance and intervention squad of the gendarmerie (PSIG) from the town of Foix and a patrol from the autonomous territorial brigade of Lavelanet, a town located about ten kilometers away, joined in the search.
An aerial detachment of the Pujols gendarmerie as well as a dog handler from the High Mountain Gendarmerie Platoon of Savignac-les-Ormeaux, about thirty kilometers from Saint-Paul-de-Jarrat, are also called in as reinforcements.
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Thanks to this strong mobilization, the young 15-year-old was found safe and sound by the gendarmes while he was walking on the side of the Departmental 117, after having reached Lavelanet and made a U-turn towards Saint-Paul-de -Jarrat. The teenager was reunited with his parents the same evening at 7.45 p.m., after a twenty-kilometer journey.