A man has been detained by French police as a huge search continues in eastern France for a 9-year-old child who vanished from the scene of a wedding at Pont-de-Beauvoisin.near Chambery. Maëlys de Araujo was last seen Wednesday at a children’s area of a reception hall. The are conflicting reports as to whether the 34-year-old who is said to be known to police was a wedding guest. He has given an inconsistent account of his whereabouts. Maëlys had gone to the wedding with her parents and elder sister as well as other members of her family. Some 180 guests tried to find her before police were called and a search began. Local police, search and rescue teams, divers and cavers have been searching the heavily wooded area but have so far failed to find a trace of her. Sniffer dogs lost the scent from Maëlys’s cuddly toy in a car park outside the wedding venue, AFP reported, suggesting that she could have been taken away by car. The search was continuing in driving rain on Thursday but a policeman told French TV that the prospect of finding anything was becoming less and less likely.
