Taskforce set up as search expands for missing Gus
Police don’t believe a boy who disappeared at a sheep station more than two weeks ago met with foul play as a task force is established to expand a search.
Source: Ten Network
Police have established a taskforce to probe the disappearance of four-year-old Gus Lamont, more than two weeks after he vanished from an outback sheep station.
South Australia Police on Tuesday expanded their search for Gus, who went missing at the Oak Park Station homestead about 40 kilometres south of Yunta, in South Australia’s Mid North region on September 27.
SA Police Commissioner Grant Stevens said there was no evidence of criminality and the task force was aimed at expanding the search area around the property for the missing child.
“There is no evidence to suggest any other circumstances that might have resulted in Gus not being located,” he said on Tuesday.
“Our focus is largely on an exhaustive search of the property, on the basis that Gus has wandered off, and we’re hopeful that we can find him and return him to his family.
You might like
“But we also have an obligation to consider all possibilities, and that’s part of our work going forward, is to make sure that nothing is left unaddressed.”
About 80 defence force personal have joined police in the fresh search for the preschooler.
The initial search, which covered approximately 470 square kilometres, ended about a week after the boy went missing.
“We are looking for up to two days. But there’ll be a continual reassessment, and the resources that we’re deploying may change over time, and the use of specialist drones will be another consideration as we move forward as well,” Stevens said.
Stay informed, daily
Gus’s family remain stoic and were co-operating with investigators, he said.
“But you can imagine just how they’re feeling without having Gus and without having answers as to exactly where Gus is and what’s happened to him,” Stevens said.
“This would be traumatic for any family.”
Taskforce Horizon is made up of 12 specialists, who will analyse information from the search and provide advice.
“Search co-ordinator specialists, medical specialists and survivability specialists, looking at every possibility, and this is us exhausting those possibilities,” Stevens said.
Gus’s grandmother was the last to see the boy, who is described as shy and adventurous. He was playing on a mound of dirt at 5pm on the day he disappeared.
Police scaled back the search after hundreds of police, defence personnel and volunteers scoured the property for almost a week in late September and early October.
Gus has long, blond, curly hair and was last seen wearing a grey sun hat, a blue T-shirt with a yellow Minion on the front, light-grey long pants and boots.
-with AAP
