On June 13, Loan Danilo Peña’s father took him for lunch at his grandmother’s. It was the five-year-old’s first time visiting her in the small rural town of 9 de Julio, Corrientes province. At around 3 p.m. he went orange picking with some cousins in a nearby field, an uncle, and two of his uncle’s friends. As the afternoon wore on, the adults say, they realized he wasn’t with the group. They returned to the house and found that he wasn’t there, either. Loan has not been seen since that afternoon.

His family reported his disappearance to the police. Initially, they treated it as a missing person case. But his disappearance is now being investigated as a possible case of child trafficking by Argentina’s federal authorities. Five of his grandmother’s guests have been arrested, along with the local police chief who first led the search.

While they were out picking oranges some 800 meters away from his grandmother’s home, Loan wanted to go back to his father at the house, his young cousins said. According to the guests, the child left the house with five other children, his uncle, and two other adults. But his father says he never saw the group set out. He only learned his son was missing after they all returned. The three adults were arrested last Tuesday, accused at first of abandoning the child in the fields.

A peeled orange, a shoe

Local and federal police launched a huge search operation. They found a peeled orange and Loan’s shoe in the area where he was allegedly last seen. They also found trails of blood, although there is no evidence yet that it is Loan’s.

Then, the case took a dramatic turn: on Friday, Mariano De Guzmán, head of the Federal Prosecutors’ Office in Goya, Corrientes, opened a federal investigation, treating Loan’s disappearance as a possible case of child trafficking. He formally requested assistance from the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Attorney General’s Office (PROTEX, by its Spanish acronym). Interpol and Missing Children are also looking for him.

On Monday, the Corrientes judiciary declared itself out of jurisdiction due to the nature of the crime being investigated, and the case was officially transferred to the federal authorities. All five suspects who were at the house the day Loan disappeared are now being accused of “child abduction for the purposes of human trafficking.”

Corrientes Governor Gustavo Valdés said during a press conference on Monday that 30 hectares have been swept so far, but that it’s highly unlikely that the child is still there.

“We believe this is a potential human trafficking case,” he said.

In a press conference on Monday evening, local prosecutors Juan Carlos Castillo and Guillermo Barry confirmed that five detainees are facing child trafficking charges and the local police chief is being accused of a cover-up.

“Search dogs marked the area where Loan’s shoe was but none of them found a trail from it, meaning that Loan never got there and the shoe was placed there,” said Barry. “This means, among other things, that there was clear tampering at the crime scene.”

Both prosecutors placed the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the police chief.

Faced with heavy criticism against the investigation — routes in and out of the area had not been closed and journalists had easy initial access to the crime scene — they also pointed to the police chief’s malfeasance. Castillo and Barry also claimed that there was sensitive information in the suspects’ phones they could not share because it could compromise the investigation but that there was sufficient evidence to definitively state that this was a child trafficking, not a missing person case.

Dogs on the scent

A friend of Loan’s grandmother and her husband, a retired navy captain, were arrested on Friday after police dogs found Loan’s scent in their truck and car. Over the preceding days, 50 police dogs had looked for Loan’s scent, but their noses never led them to the area where the suspects said he got lost. They stayed around the house, where the scent seemed to stop. This led investigators to believe Loan never went to collect oranges. Instead, they believe, he was snatched in a vehicle.

On Sunday, investigators searched two homes belonging to his grandmother’s friends in Resistencia, in Chaco province, 200 km away from 9 de Julio — and around an hour’s drive from Argentina’s border with Paraguay. They found the pair had been at their apartment there between June 14-15, right after Loan went missing. Investigators think they may have taken Loan across the border.

A 9-millimeter pistol and ammunition were also found at the apartment.

The sixth suspect is the local chief of police. He was arrested on Saturday for allowing the suspect couple to travel out of town despite the ongoing investigation. The local police have temporarily removed him from the force and initiated an internal investigation into his conduct.

According to local media reports, the retired navy captain attempted to take his own life while in detention on Sunday night. He has requested to testify before a judge.

The last picture of Loan was taken at the family lunch. His grandmother, father, and five of the detainees can be seen in the picture, along with other unidentified people. It remains unknown who took the photo.

On Saturday, Loan’s mother María Noguera fainted during a march organized by the family along the streets of Nueve de Julio. “I want my son back,” she pleaded. The father, José Peña, said his son “was stolen” and that the suspects had attempted to distract him during the gathering. “My mother is a poor old lady who invited people for lunch,” he told LN+ news channel. “She would never have thought they would do that.”

The Security Ministry has launched a national alert and is offering a AR$5 million reward (US$5,393 at the official rate, US$3,875 at the MEP rate) to anyone who provides concrete information on Loan’s whereabouts. Loan is 90 centimeters tall and weighs about 26 kilograms. His skin is tan and he has dark hair and eyes. He has a scar on his hairline. Anyone who believes they have seen him should report it to the 134 line.