Deaf Boy in Mexico Her Kin, Frenchwoman Says : Frenchwoman Identifies Deaf Boy Found in Mexico

U.S. officials said today that a Frenchwoman has told them she is the grandmother of a deaf boy found wandering in Mexico whom authorities have been trying to identify for more than six months.

Christopher English, chief of special consular services at the U.S. Embassy, said he was contacted Tuesday by a woman living in a Normandy village who saw a picture of the boy on the television news and recognized him.

“She called and calmly said she had reason to believe that she was the boy’s grandmother,” English said.

Authorities found the freckled, brown-haired boy, named Sabat by his Mexican guardians, wandering near Juarez, Mexico, last November. He had scars that looked about two years old and could have come from home-treated injuries.

Couldn’t Identify Himself

He was unable to identify himself to authorities or say where he was from.

Sabat suffers from impaired hearing and communicates mostly by drawing pictures and gesturing. His pictures seem to indicate that he survived the crash of a four-seat, single-engine airplane that killed his parents and sister.

After Mexican authorities noticed Sabat preferred hamburgers and hot dogs over Mexican fare and responded more enthusiastically toward American cartoon characters, they contacted their Texas counterparts.

His story has received international media attention and pictures of the boy have circulated in France, England, Mexico and throughout the United States.

English said the Frenchwoman, who asked not to be identified, provided the address and telephone number of her son who lives in El Paso, not far from where the boy was found.

She said that she had not spoken to her son for several months and that the telephone had been disconnected, English said, adding that the son is also French.

English said he called Terry Kincaid of the FBI in El Paso and passed along the information.

Best Lead ‘in Months’

“He said it was the best lead he had had in months,” English said, adding that Kincaid planned to check out the address today.

The woman said that her son was married to a Mexican woman and that the couple had three children. She had not seen them for several years.

Her daughter, who lives in Paris, also recognized the boy from pictures accompanying the news story, he said.