WATCH: Alex reunites with grandma Gran and tells The Sun what she’s been up to in the years since she’s been missing
British teenager Alex Patty falsified the details of his escape to save his mother and grandfather from the police.
In an interview the sunHe said he fabricated a story about the four-day trip, hoping it would deter authorities from tracking them.
Six years after she disappeared, a teenage girl has been found walking in France.
He began having doubts about his mother and grandfather’s nomadic life when he was “14 or 15 years old.”
Future ambitions to attend college prompted her decision to abandon their lifestyle in the French Pyrenees, she explained.
Back in the care of his grandmother in Oldham, Alex has spoken in detail about his escape and what prompted him to leave.
“I’m lying to protect my mum and grandad, but I realize they’ll be caught anyway,” he told The Sun.
“I’m not lost. I know exactly where I’m going,” he added, describing his journey as a two-day journey, first pretending to ask for directions to the city of Quilon, then heading for Toulouse.
Alex was picked up by a delivery driver who found him early one rainy morning on a road in the foothills of the French Pyrenees near Toulouse.
All he had was €100 in cash, no mobile phone, he was on his way to Toulouse and fed on anything he could find in the fields and gardens, Mr Assidini previously said.
He drove the teenager to Revel, just outside Carcassonne, and left him with local gendarmes who checked his identity and took him to Toulouse before his journey back to England was arranged.
She said at the time they were looking for alternative lifestyles and Alex didn’t want to go to school.
Melanie and David Patty left Greater Manchester with Alex for a week’s holiday in Marbella, Spain on 30 September 2017.
Alex Patty, center, went missing with his mother Melanie Patty and grandfather David Patty.
He was last seen in Malaga harbor on 8 October that year, on which day they were expected to return to England.
In his interview with The Sun, Alex said reuniting with his UK family was emotional. Now, the teenager says she wants to go to college — to continue learning French and study computer science.
