CHEVALINE (France), Sept 6: French authorities came under fire on Thursday after a four-year-old survivor of a deadly shooting went undiscovered for hours in a car in which her mother, father and grandmother died.

The girl miraculously emerged physically unscathed from the family car around midnight (2200 GMT Wednesday), eight hours after three members of her family and another man were found slain in the French Alps.

The girl had been hidden in the backseat of the car by the bodies of her mother and grandmother and was not spotted by the British cyclist who was first on the scene or by firemen and police who arrived shortly after 4:00 pm (1400 GMT).

Prosecutor Eric Maillaud said on Thursday the girl had succeeded in making herself “completely invisible”. A psychiatrist explained how the terrifying situation could have induced the girl into a total physical and psychological shutdown that would have ensured she barely moved or made a sound throughout the eight hours.

“We had instructions not to enter the car and not to move the bodies,” explained Lieutenant-Colonel Benoit Vinnemann of the local gendarmerie.

The instructions were issued pending the arrival of a gendarmerie team of forensic experts. The elite IRCGN team, based near Paris, did not arrive until nearly midnight.

In the meantime, the local gendarmes were unable to even open the doors of the family's BMW for fear that bullet-pierced windows would shatter, potentially compromising the work of the forensic experts.

The delay in opening up the car was attacked by a union which represents officers in the national police, the other, often rival, wing of France's domestic security forces.

In a statement, the Synergie union said the IRCGN was incapable of operating in every corner of France and voiced astonishment that a police forensic team based in Lyon had not been called in.

“The ineptitude of a dual and expensive system has been held up to ridicule,” the union said.

“Why did the national gendarmerie authorities not call upon the staff of the National Police Scientific Institute (INPS) based in Lyon, one hour from the scene of the crime?” Vinnemann said that the car had been checked as thoroughly as possible in the circumstances.

“Firemen, technicians and doctors all looked into the car through the (bullet) holes in the windows but none of them saw the girl.

“She didn't budge. She stayed under the legs of her mother.” A helicopter equipped with a thermal camera took images of the car to check if there were any other bodies inside but also failed to identify the girl.—AFP