The fire brigade and police recovered the body of a ten-year-old boy from the Elbe in the port of Hamburg on Thursday evening. Based on the findings so far, it is probably about ten-year-old Perry, who has been missing for a good month, said a police spokesman to the DPA news agency. However, the final identification at the Institute for Forensic Medicine is still pending.
According to local newspapers in Hamburg, a water sports enthusiast discovered the lifeless body floating in the river around 8 p.m. in the port near the Köhlbrandbrücke in the southern Elbe and then alerted the emergency services.
The ten-year-old disappeared from his school in the Marmstorf district in southern Hamburg on February 28. Video recordings then showed the boy at an S-Bahn station and on a harbor ferry. Passers-by later saw the student on Bubendey-Ufer, around three kilometers from where the body was found, fall into the torrential Elbe and sink. Several extensive rescue and search operations with a large contingent of fire brigade and police were then unsuccessful (stern reported).
Police are still investigating the circumstances of Perry’s disappearance from his school.
Sources: “Hamburger Abendblatt”, “Bild” newspaper, news agencies DPA and AFP