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HAPPY ENDING TO A BIZARRE MISTAKE
A 62-year-old man in France put police on high alert after calling emergency services to report that he had forgotten his wife at a highway gas station and could not remember which one.
A Paris man left on vacation for Morocco with his wife and daughter in the family car. They made several stops at gas stations along the way, but during one of these breaks, something peculiar happened.
At around 4:30 in the morning, the man, whose name has not been revealed by the media, left the gas station without realizing he had forgotten his wife there.
He only realized his mistake about 300 km (186 miles) and four hours later and quickly called emergency services for help. It was a very bizarre conversation, since the man could not explain how he had forgotten his wife at a gas station and then driven four hours before noticing her absence, and he also could not remember which gas station it was.
“We received this rather confusing call around 8:30 am,” the police station in France’s Lardes region said. “The man no longer knew where he had stopped, or when. The gentleman did mention one rest stop he had taken near Orléans. We contacted our colleagues in that area to have them check.”
Interestingly, the couple’s 22-year-old daughter was in the car the whole time, but she could offer no assistance to police because she was asleep and had no idea where her father had forgotten her mother.
Despite checking multiple rest areas along the motorway, police could not find the missing woman, which only made the situation more tense.
The police began to suspect foul play.
Luckily, this strange story has a happy ending. The police were able to locate the missing woman with the help of a mobile network operator who tracked her phone.
She was at a motorway service station in Deux-Sèvres, 300 kilometers away from where her husband was when he realized that she was missing. The woman had not moved since 4:30 am and was patiently waiting for her family to return.
Following a short investigation, police concluded that the Paris man had genuinely forgotten his wife, so after reuniting the family, they were allowed to continue their journey to Morocco.
We congratulate the French police on superior detective work and are, of course, pleased that the family was united, but this strange story begs several questions: if the wife had a phone, why didn’t she just call her husband sometime during the four hours that she was stranded...and more logically, why did the husband call the cops and not his wife?
Perhaps some important details got lost in the translation, or, possibly, too much French red wine was involved.
(Editor’s note: Special thanks goes to "Pete" (Chat GPT) for the illustration.
Source: odditycentral.com
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