Eight-Year-Old Boy Found In Suitcase Being Smuggled Across Spanish Border

An 8-year-old boy was found in a suitcase near the Spanish border on Thursday.

8-Year-Old Boy Found In Suitcase

A woman tried to get the suitcase, a rectangular case with wheels and just enough room to for the boy to crouch in, across the border into Ceuta, a Spanish territory, from Morocco. When the suitcase was put through an X-ray scanner, police saw the boy inside and immediately opened the bag, finding him alive but in a “terrible state.”

The woman transporting the suitcase told authorities that she has no ties to the boy, but was paid by his father to smuggle him across the border. Authorities reported that she seemed hesitant when nearing a pedestrian checkpoint along the Spanish border, and so was asked to put her suitcase in the X-ray scanner when they discovered the boy.

“He was shocked when we opened the suitcase to see so many people looking at him,” described a police spokesman.

The boy’s father, who lived in the Canary Islands, reportedly attempted to cross the border himself soon after. Both the woman and the father have been arrested.

The boy, reportedly from the Ivory Coast, was examined by doctors and is currently in the custody of child-protective services in Ceuta.