Alleged child abduction in Anderlecht was a Halloween prank by two girls aged 8 and 9

What police first reported

On Thursday, 29 October 2026, police in Anderlecht, a municipality in Brussels, said they had received an alert about a possible abduction of a child of about 12 on a public road. Commissioner Laurent Lacroix said the incident was first reported to have happened around 17:15 near number 50 of rue des Trèfles. According to that first account, a white van turned into an access road to a car park and stopped at a barrier, after which two masked people got out and forced a child into it. The local police zone confirmed the alert, and Lacroix described the case in these words:

“On Thursday 29 October 2026, our services were alerted to a possible abduction of a child of about twelve on the public highway in Anderlecht.”

At that point, officers had not established the child's identity, and no disappearance matching the report had been filed with them. Lacroix put it this way:

“At this stage, the identity of the child could not yet be established and no disappearance matching these facts has been reported to our services.”

A prank, according to a source close to the probe

RTL info, citing a source close to the investigation, later reported that the alert was a Halloween prank by two girls aged 8 and 9. The two people who contacted police were those girls, and the account they gave does not match any disappearance report that reached the force. The prank explanation came from that source rather than from a police statement, which means it has not been made official. The sequence from the first alert to the prank account is set out in the chart below.

Legal position for the children and their parents

Under Belgian law, children under 12 are presumed criminally irresponsible, so no court, including the youth court, can prosecute them or impose criminal sanctions. The two girls, aged 8 and 9, therefore face no criminal consequence under that rule. Their parents are a different matter, because parents are civilly responsible for the acts of their children. 7sur7 reported that the parents could be ordered to repay the police zone for the costs of sending intervention teams to the scene, reviewing surveillance cameras and mobilising investigators, and that the total could climb to several thousand euros. The parents could also face communal administrative sanctions (SAC). The articles do not say whether the police zone intends to seek those costs.

What remains unconfirmed

The police statements in the articles describe an investigation that is still open into the precise circumstances of the report and the identity of the people involved. The only police statements quoted were given on Thursday evening, and no later official police update appears in the articles. No on-record police statement confirms the prank explanation, which rests on a source close to the investigation. Police also said the child's identity had not been established at that stage. Until police confirm the account, the event should be read as an alert that authorities say is under investigation.