BREAKING: SA Police reveal suspect and declare disappearance of Gus a major crime
SA Police have revealed a person who was living at Oak Dam Station is a suspect in the case of the missing four-year-old who vanished from the Mid North property last year, at a major press conference today.
SA Police said a person living at Oak Dam Station is now a suspect in the case of missing four-year-old Gus Lamont, who vanished from a remote station in the state’s Mid North in September last year.
Detective Superintendent Darren Fielke told a press conference in the city at 1pm today that police have now declared the case a major crime but Gus’s parents were not suspects in his disappearance.
“Family members have been cooperating with police and establishing the movements of Gus around the time he went missing,” Fielke said.
“As a result we have identified a number of inconsistencies and discrepancies with that information as it relates to timelines and the versions of events provided to us by the family members.
“As a result of those inconsistencies and investigations into them, a person who resides at Oak Park Station has withdrawn their support for the police and is no longer cooperating with us.”
Fielke said that on January 14 and January 15 this year police executed a search warrant, conducting a forensic search of the homestead and a number of items were seized including a vehicle, a motorcycle and some electronic devices.
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All of these items are now subject to forensic testing. “We have a suspect who is known to Gus,” he said. “We don’t believe now that Gus is alive.”
While he could make no further comment regarding the suspect he said that: “Sadly, to date our efforts to locate Gus have been unsuccessful. Since Gus’s disappearance there has been a groundswell of support from a range of government agencies, private companies and community groups,” he said.
“The scale of the air and land search as part of this investigation is unprecedented and today I’m going to provide much more information into what we have done as part of the Task Force Horizon investigation.
“The search for Gus was based on him walking off from Oak Park Station and getting lost, one of three investigations – the other two are focused on Gus being abducted from Oak Park Station or whether someone known to him was involved in his disappearance and suspected death.”
However, he said numerous investigations had “found no evidence that Gus has been abducted from the property”.
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Oak Park Station is remote, 45km inland from the Barrier Highway, it can only be accessed by one of two 45km roads from different directions.
To date there had been 163 SAPOL members and 230 non-SAPOL resources including SES, Australian Defence Force, indigenous trackers, community groups, involved over 20 days to conduct the search at Oak Park Station.
Gus was last seen by his grandmother on September 27.
He was playing in the dirt near his family homestead, 43km south of Yunta, about 5pm.
Today, Fielke said there had been a detailed ground search to a radius of over 5.47km or 94sqkm from the station was conducted on foot over several days.
Statistical data showed children aged four to six years of age were located 95 per cent of the time within 5.47km from the last place they were seen, he said. This area searched by police contained three dams, all had been searched twice, on one occasion those dams were drained.
All of those searches had failed to locate Gus “or any items belonging to Gus”.
“At this time, despite all of the combined efforts… we have found no evidence, physical or otherwise to suggest that Gus has merely wandered off from the Oak Park homestead,” Fielke said.
There is also a watercourse that runs through the station and that has been thoroughly searched.
An underground search of six abandoned mine shafts in November last year failed to find any trace of the young boy but with no sign.
Search teams returned to the remote property over several days, focusing on six mine shafts near the Oak Park Station area, 40km south of Yunta, using specialist officers.
Extensive aerial searches also had been conducted including using an aircraft with highly specialised equipment outside the 5km radius, with high-quality imagery provided.
