Japanese police are searching for a 7-year-old boy missing in a mountain forest of Hokkaido since Saturday after his parents abandoned him there.
Yamato Tanooka’s parents told police they left their son at the foot of Mount Komagatake as punishment.
Local police say they initially received a call from the parents on Saturday evening saying the boy went missing while the family was picking wild forest vegetable.
The parents, from Hokuto City, later admitted to police that they forced the boy to get out of the car in the forest and left him there as a disciplinary measure. They said they returned after a while but he was no longer there.
About 130 police officers and firefighters resumed the search for the missing boy on Monday morning. They are combing a 5-kilometer area around where he left the car.
Police say the boy was wearing a black jacket, blue trousers and red sneakers, and was carrying no food.
Source and image: NHK
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