Overview
- A local couple found the two boys crying on a rural road near Alcácer do Sal and Comporta and took them to a bakery before police transferred them to Setúbal Hospital for assessment.
- The children, aged three and five, told investigators they had been blindfolded and led into woodland under the pretense of a game before being left alone.
- Each boy had a small backpack containing only a change of clothes, fruit and water and neither carried identity documents when found.
- Portugal's National Republican Guard detained a 41-year-old woman and a 55-year-old man believed to be the boys’ mother and stepfather after spotting their car in Fátima; they face probes for abandonment, exposure to danger and related offences.
- French and Portuguese authorities are coordinating a cross-border judicial inquiry, the children were placed with a French foster family in Lisbon by Portuguese court order, and prosecutors say no final legal conclusions or motive have been reached.