The frantic search for a two-year-old girl who disappeared in eastern Serbia last week has ended in tears as authorities confirmed she was killed.
Danka Ilic went missing on March 26 in the eastern city of Bor, prompting Serbian authorities to use for the first time its version of an Amber alert system for child abduction emergencies, sending text messages nationwide about the incident.
Little Danka, who became known as ‘the girl with the pacifier’, was with her mother at a playground when she mysteriously vanished after her mother briefly lost sight of her.
‘When I turned around, she was gone,’ Ivana Ilic told Serbian media in the days following her disappearance.
Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic today declared the girl had died and said two ‘monsters’ were arrested in connection with the incident.
‘The police have arrested two individuals who have killed the little girl. As far as I understand, both of them have confessed to the crime,’ Vucic told government officials.
‘What kind of monsters are we dealing with?’ he added.
Serbia’s interior ministry later confirmed that the two suspects had confessed, but said the search for the girl’s body was still underway.
‘The police continue their intensive work on this case and will promptly inform the public about any developments,’ the ministry said in a statement.
Two-year-old girl Danka Ilic, who disappeared in eastern Serbia last week, was killed. Two suspects have been arrested, President Aleksandar Vucic said today
Serbia’s President, Aleksandar Vucic speaks during a press conference in Belgrade, Serbia
In this photograph made available by the Serbian Ministry of Interior, Serbian Police Rescue team search a forest near Bor, Serbia, Friday, March 29, 2024
Hopes were briefly stirred over the weekend after a video surfaced of a young child at a bus station in Vienna that sparked speculation Danka might have been in Austria, where a large Serbian diaspora community lives.
A Viennese police spokesperson said: ‘A Serbian citizen who lives in Vienna, according to his own statements, may have seen a girl who disappeared in Serbia accompanied by two women at a tram stop in the city centre at around 8pm on 30 March.
‘He contacted the Serbian authorities in this regard, who turned to the Viennese police with a request for an investigation.’
The unnamed man filmed the girl with the two women and sent the footage to the authorities.
On Sunday, Interpol also flagged the case, issuing a Yellow Notice that alerts officials about a missing person.
Ivana had told Serbian media this week that the family continued to ‘hold on’ amid the search.
‘We are waiting for all this to end, hoping for the best, and then my husband and I will speak publicly and respond to all the insults, accusations and nonsense,’ she told the local Serbian news outlet Nova.
But hopes were dashed when bloodstains found in a car were ultimately found to be Danka’s following forensic tests.
Investigators then tracked down the car’s owners and promptly arrested them. They later confessed amid questioning.
Serbian police have arrested two men suspected of killing a 2-year-old girl whose disappearance last month gripped the nation
In this photograph made available by the Serbian Ministry of Interior, Serbian Police Rescue team search a forest near Bor, Serbia, Friday, March 29, 2024
The men had tried to thoroughly clean the car with chemicals, according to Serbian outlet Informer, but forensic experts were still able to find traces of the girl’s blood.
Serbia’s Minister of Internal Affairs later told Informer that though the two suspects have confessed, they are both blaming each other for being responsible.
He added that investigators ‘cannot trust’ the detainees to lead them to Danka’s corpse.
‘The two of them took us to a landfill site to show us where the body was, but we have information that one returned on the 28th and transferred the body to another location.
‘We cannot trust them because they blame each other,’ said Bratislav Gasic.
Abductions of children remain relatively rare in Serbia, despite social media users pumping out conspiracy theories about the selling and trafficking of adolescents in the Balkan nation.
