Child, 9, locked in seated position in father’s van for years ‘unable to walk’

Outside view of the building where a 9-year-old boy was rescued this week after living locked in his father’s utility van since 2024, in Hagenbach, Eastern France (Picture: AP)

A nine-year-old boy who was trapped in his dad’s van for two years, malnourished and without access to a toilet, has been rescued.

Neighbour heard ‘sounds of a child’ coming from a van, near but were initially told it was just a cat.

But officers who broke the vehicle open found the child ‘lying in a fetal position, naked, covered by a blanket on top of a mound of trash and near excrement,’ in Hagenback, on the Swiss and German bor...