“I am in danger”: worrying disappearance of a Breton seasonal worker in Méribel – Bretagne

Maël Briand has been missing since January 20, 2023. Originally from La Chapelle-aux-Filtzméens (35), a village located between Rennes and Saint-Malo, the 23-year-old young man had just started a cook contract for the season. winter, at the restaurant Les Petits Oignons, in the ski resort of Méribel, in Savoie.

The Breton was seen for the last time on Friday January 20, at 7:45 a.m., near a roundabout in the town. Staring into space, he was filmed by a surveillance camera with a snow shovel in his hands. While the thermometer had dropped to -16 degrees overnight, the young cook was simply dressed in jeans, a long puffer jacket and a pair of sneakers.

What happened on the night of January 19 to 20?

Without hearing from him for two weeks, his family is living a waking nightmare. “I don’t understand what could have happened,” says Fabien, his father. “I communicated with him every day, he was delighted with this new job. He felt very good, he had no reason to disappear. I’m desperate, I can’t sleep anymore. On social networks, Yaëlle, the little sister, multiplied the bottles in the sea to try to glean the slightest information allowing her brother to be found.

The day before his disappearance, Maël had finished his service at the restaurant, around 11 p.m., before being dropped off near a bowling alley where he was to meet friends. According to one of his colleagues, the young man would then have returned to the apartment he occupies with another employee around 1 a.m. “According to his roommate, he was not in his normal state during the night,” she confides.

Disturbing messages

According to his father, the young man would have tried to contact him in the night… without success. “I was sleeping and my cell phone was on silent,” he regrets. Stranger, Maël would have sent several disturbing messages to a friend – including this one: “I am in danger”. One of the very last communications sent from his phone before he cut himself off.

According to the testimonies we have collected, his roommate would then have discovered, in the early morning, that Maël had fled from the apartment through a bathroom window – in which he had locked himself. Only a few tens of minutes before being captured for the last time by a surveillance camera and then vanishing.

“An unbearable wait”

The next day, it was his work colleagues who alerted the gendarmerie, when Maël did not show up at the restaurant to take his service. “We hope nothing happened to him,” says a restaurant employee. “Maybe he just left without telling us, but we fear the worst.”

An investigation was opened by the Albertville prosecutor’s office and entrusted to the gendarmes of Moûtiers. A call for witnesses was broadcast and numerous searches on foot were carried out in the valley. A helicopter and a canine team also took part in the operations. In vain.

From Brittany, his family continues to hope. “I watch my phone all day,” says his father in a trembling voice. “To have good or bad news, I don’t know. We always think it only happens to other people, but it’s not true. The wait is unbearable”. At the beginning of next week, Maël’s little sister must go to Savoie to participate in the research.