Teenager Alex Batty returns to Britain after being missing for 6 years and then turning up in France

By JILL LAWLESS
Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — British teenager Alex Batty has come back to the U.K, six years after he left home on what was meant to be a two-week family vacation in Spain. Batty never returned to his grandmother and guardian in Oldham, near Manchester. Her frantic appeals found no trace of him. That’s until he turned up this week, walking along a road in southern France in the middle of the night. Now, 17, he said he had been living a nomadic lifestyle in Spain, Morocco and France with his mother and grandfather as part of a “spiritual community.” Police say Batty returned to the U.K. Saturday from Toulouse. He said police have yet to full establish whether there should be a criminal investigation.