Was boy swept away by river? Police investigate new tip in disappearance case of German Arian (6)

There is still no trace of six-year-old Arian from Bremervörde, a town between the cities of Bremen and Hamburg in Lower Saxony, Germany. After a special tip, the police searched the Oste River on Wednesday.

Little Arian has been missing since April 22, after he was able to leave the parental home unnoticed. Surveillance camera footage shows him walking in a nearby forest after his disappearance. For a week, hundreds of volunteers and rescue services searched day and night for the boy. Dogs, drones and a helicopter were used, among other things. But there was no trace of the boy. Arian has autism. He doesn’t speak and probably wouldn’t respond to calls from strangers. The police therefore stopped the first active phase of the search at the end of April.

The police are now continuing based on investigation and tips. Such a tip brought them to the Oste River this week. A woman from southern Germany is said to have seen an object in the water on a livestream from a webcam near a road bridge in Osten-Hemmoor. “The woman responded well,” said the police spokesperson. “She immediately contacted the police.

Firefighters then searched the water near the bridge, also using a drone, a special sniffer dog and a police helicopter. The helicopter flew along the Oste from Bremervörde to the mouth of the Oste in the Elbe. “This was an ad-hoc search,” explains the police spokesperson, who spoke of “an unusual tip.”

But unfortunately the search turned up nothing. “We didn’t find the boy. We don’t know what it was,” the spokesperson said, referring to the object the woman had seen.

The investigators are currently keeping all avenues open. “It seems most likely that an accident has happened,” the police spokesperson said. It is possible that the boy fell into the Oste River. But there are still many question marks, it sounds.