International
4-Year-Old Australian Girl Found Alive Weeks After Going Missing
- Girl who vanished from Australian campsite found alive after weeks of searching
Ekohotblog reports that a 4-year-old girl who was reportedly taken from her family’s tent at a rural Western Australian camping more than two weeks ago has been discovered alive.
Police discovered Cleo Smith in a residence near her home in Carnarvon, a tiny town about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from the campground, in the early hours of Wednesday morning, according to Western Australia police.
According to WA Police Commissioner Chris Dawson, a 36-year-old male with “no familial connection” is in police custody.
Cleo had been missing since October 16, when her mother woke to find her gone at the start of a family camping trip to the Quobba Blowholes, a popular recreational spot on the coast. She had been sleeping just feet away from her mother, stepfather and baby sister.
Cleo’s disappearance triggered a massive police search that initially covered several square kilometers around the site and later extended nationwide as alerts were issued for sightings of the girl.
Weeks of painstaking detective work uncovered a clue late Tuesday, which prompted officers to execute a search warrant on the home in the early hours of Wednesday, on what would have been day 19 of Cleo’s disappearance.
“We were looking for a needle in a haystack and we found it, that led us to what happened at 12:46 a.m. this morning,” Deputy Police Commissioner Col Blanch told 6PR radio.
Earlier Blanch said in a Facebook video that police broke into a locked house in Carnarvon about 1 a.m. local time (1 p.m. ET) and found a child who identified herself as Cleo.
One of the officers who found her picked the child up and asked her name, Blanch said. She replied, “My name is Cleo,” he said.
“This is the outcome we all hoped and prayed for,” he added.
Cleo Smith’s mother, Ellie Smith, posted to Instagram: “Our family is whole again.”
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