A mother and her two teenage children have been missing since 20 April, when they left their home near Piacenza loaded with camping equipment. Their car has been found in Friuli Venezia Giulia, but the family has vanished.
Searches are continuing for the fourth consecutive day for Sonia Bottacchiari, 49, of Castell’Arquato in the Piacenza province, her daughter aged 16 and son aged 14. They disappeared after leaving home on 20 April with four dogs and camping supplies. The family told the children’s father, Yuri Groppi, they were heading to Friuli Venezia Giulia for a short holiday. They never returned.
Their grey Chevrolet Captiva was found on 6 May in a car park in Via Monte Grappa, Tarcento (Udine), fully equipped for camping but with no trace of the family or their tent. The last phone signal was recorded in the early hours of 22 April in the Tarcento area, which has since been transformed into a forward command post for the rescue operation.
Around eighty professionals and volunteers are working on site, including foot teams, canine units, drone units, and the Drago fire brigade helicopter from Venice. Groppi is personally participating in the search alongside a family member. The search perimeter has been extended to twenty kilometres from the car, and Slovenian authorities have been alerted given the proximity of the border.
Police acting on a credible sighting
Among roughly twenty reports received by the Carabinieri in recent hours, one is considered particularly credible — from a hiker who claims to have encountered the mother, the two children, and four dogs in a mountain area of Friuli Venezia Giulia in May. The coordinates have been passed to rescuers and the helicopter crew.
The Piacenza Public Prosecutor’s Office is currently pursuing the case under a charge of child abduction, though investigators have been considering whether to upgrade this to kidnapping, which would allow significantly broader investigative powers.
Before departing, Bottacchiari had resigned from one of her two jobs and collected her severance pay. This is a detail investigators consider consistent with a deliberate decision to leave, and which Groppi himself has acknowledged as a possibility. “If you’ve done something beyond what you can handle, things can be sorted out,” he said in a public appeal. “The important thing is that you make yourselves heard.”
The Penelope Association, which supports families of missing persons, is also present in Tarcento.
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