4-year-old found alive in British car after shooting

A four-year old girl was found alive hiding under the bodies of three members of a British family in a car following a mysterious shooting in the French Alps which left four people dead. "She was hidden under the bodies for some eight hours and didn't move for the whole time," and was not discovered until investigators reached the scene, local public prosecutor Eric Maillaud said. Three of the four victims appear to have been a British family on holiday, Maillaud said. The identity of a dead man, described as the father of the family, has been "almost certainly" established, while two women victims in the British registered car are yet to be definitively identified, added Maillaud. Police sealed off the area around the car to allow forensic experts to go over the scene before the corpses were removed. It was those experts who discovered the four-year-old girl who had previously remained unseen in the car. Another girl who was found shot at the scene earlier was in stable condition Thursday, after being rushed to hospital in critical condition, though doctors said she was likely to stay in hospital for several days. The shooting took place in a tree-lined car park on the edge of the picturesque village of Chevaline which is popular with tourists and second homeowners from all over Europe, including many Britons. A spokesman for the Foreign Office in London said: "We are aware of the reports of the shooting and we are looking into these urgently." The Paris embassy was also liaising with the police in Britain. The bodies were discovered by another cyclist at around 3:50 pm (1350 GMT). He was questioned by police Wednesday. "We are going to try to interview people in the neighbourhood," Maillaud told reporters, stressing that they had not yet formed any hypothesis as to what had happened. Experts from the national gendarmerie's IRCGN unit were expected to collect DNA samples, shells left at the scene for ballistics analysis and check for traces of other vehicles that may have been at the scene. The bodies were taken to the town of Grenoble for autopsies. Around 60 gendarmes were involved in a search for potential clues which continued during the night. The position of the bodies in the car and the large number of cartridges found at the scene gave rise to speculation the killing could have been the result of an armed robbery that the cyclist may have inadvertently interrupted. But there was no immediate comment on that theory from the prosecutor or police at the scene.