Student ploy to beat park entry fees triggers French police

NANTES, France (AFP) - A plan by a group of French students to save a few euros on entry fees to an animal park by hiding one of their number in the boot of their car triggered a full-scale police alert this week after witnesses thought they were seeing a kidnapping.

A helicopter, 60 officers and roadblocks were deployed within minutes of the two witnesses calling to say they had seen what looked to be a child being forced into the back of the vehicle outside the "Planete Sauvage" park near Nantes in western France.

When the police swooped on the car inside the park, they found the boot empty.

The diminutive 18-year-old young woman, who had been inside but who was now sitting in one of the passenger seats, quickly confessed to the ploy.

Once satisfied the whole thing was a ruse gone wrong, the officers handed the students over to the park's management -- which immediately made the red-faced woman pay up the 16-euro (20-dollar) entry charge.