A nine-year-old boy has been rescued after living locked in his father’s utility van in eastern France since 2024, according to the local prosecutor. The child has been hospitalised, and his father detained.

Police were alerted by a neighbour to the “sounds of a child” coming from a van on Monday in the village of Hagenbach, near the borders with Switzerland and Germany, according to a statement on Saturday from prosecutor Nicolas Heitz.

After forcing the van open, officers found the child “lying in a fetal position, naked, covered by a blanket on top of a mound of trash and near excrement”, Heitz said.

The boy was clearly malnourished and could no longer walk after being in a seated position for so long, according to the statement.

The boy’s father told investigators that he put the child in the truck in November 2024 “to protect him” because his partner wanted to send the then seven-year-old to a psychiatric hospital, the prosecutor said.

Heitz said there was no medical record that the boy had any psychiatric problems before he disappeared and that he had had good grades in school.