One of the elements that most impacted the witness was a gesture by the minor: according to his account, the girl was covering her right eye, a detail that reminded him of a very particular physical feature of Madeleine McCann, the coloboma in the iris, a characteristic that was widely publicized during the international search campaigns. In the year 2009, Madeleine would have been six years old, an age that the declarant considered compatible with the girl whom he observed on that occasion.
The witness himself acknowledged in his statement that he did not give "immediate" credibility to what he had seen and that, for that reason, he did not report it to the authorities at the time. It was only years later, influenced by information, reconstructions of the case, and speculations that were circulating on social media, when he decided to leave a written record of his memory and present it as testimony.
