Portuguese police arrest woman suspected of abandoning children on the road

The National Republican Guard of Portugal reported on Thursday (21) that it had detained a French woman suspected of abandoning her two young children.

The children were found earlier this week walking alone on a road in a small Portuguese town.

French authorities had issued a Europe-wide alert to find the woman and children, aged four and five, after their father, from the city of Colmar, in eastern France, reported them missing.

The Portuguese Judicial Police said in a statement that the children were found on Tuesday (19) on a road in the city of Alcácer do Sal, in the Alentejo region, apparently lost after being abandoned by their mother, whose identity was not revealed.

The man who found them, Alexandre Quintas, said that the children were crying and that the eldest son told him that their parents had left them alone.

"When I saw how the backpacks were, I realized that they had been abandoned," Quintas told Portuguese broadcaster SIC, describing that the children had food and clothes inside their backpacks.

The National Republican Guard, a military police force, highlighted in a statement that it had detained the 41-year-old woman and a 55-year-old man in the city of Fátima, "both suspected of abandoning the two children found alone".

The woman is being investigated in the Grândola judicial court for the crimes of exposure to danger and abandonment, reported the Judiciary Police.

Source: CNN