Search for missing 4-year-old boy Gus Lamont near Yunta in Outback SA scaled back
There is still a chance to find the missing four-year-old to give his family much-needed closure, an Indigenous tracker says despite SA Police scaling back the search.
Even with the police search scaled back, an Indigenous tracker says they still shouldn’t give up hope of recovering four-year-old August Lamont to give his family much-needed closure.
Eight days have now passed since the little boy affectionately known as “Gus” vanished from his family’s Outback property, near Yunta – and hopes of finding him alive have all but faded.
Police have combed more than 47,000ha of unforgiving country in one of the state’s largest search operations Assistant Commissioner Ian Parrott said on Friday that search teams had
done “absolutely everything” possible to find Gus.
“We’ve all been hoping for a miracle, but that miracle has not eventuated,” he said.
“Despite our best efforts, we have not been able to locate him, and, unfortunately, we are now having to scale back this search for Gus.”
But tracker and former policeman Aaron Stuart, who has helped SA Police locate missing people and escaped prisoners in the bush, believes there is still a chance to find Gus – even if not alive – and says he is ready to step in.
“If I had been called in straight away, I may have been able to give police a clearer idea of whether he was still on the property or if he had walked away from the homestead,” he said.
“I honestly don’t think he’s gone far.”
Mr Stuart, a Ngarabunna man, said expert trackers should have been brought in earlier – before the ground was disturbed.
“You only get one chance at this, and the biggest thing you’re up against is time – not the weather, it’s time,” he said.
“And you don’t put them on a motorbike or in a four-wheel-drive, you let them track the little fella on foot. You’re tracking a four-year-old, not a marathon runner who’s going to cover 120km a day.”
As police vehicles rolled out and soldiers packed away their gear, the police said they had shifted the search into an investigative phase, retracing every step and piecing together what might have happened to Gus.
Wearing a blue Minions shirt, the “quiet, adventurous” Gus was last seen about 5pm on Saturday, playing in the sand outside his family’s Oak Park Station homestead, 40km south of Yunta.
Left alone for just half an hour, he was gone by the time his grandmother, Shannon, returned about 5.30pm. The sun was sinking fast, slipping below the horizon at 6.16pm, and panic set in.
For three desperate hours, the family searched, shouting his name into the fading light, before finally calling police at 8.30pm.
By the time officers arrived an hour later, darkness had descended on the station.
Mr Parrott said that Gus’s family was “understandably devastated”.
“Life’s not supposed to work where a parent loses a child – it’s supposed to work the other way around,” he said.
“It becomes incredibly traumatic and upsetting for families who lose children, and particularly in circumstances where you don’t necessarily know the answers.
“So, the family are pretty upset, as you’d expect.”
Police believe Gus simply wandered off and say there’s no reason to suspect foul play at this stage.
Mr Parrott also urged people to stop speculating online.
“Can I just remind people that it’s not helpful,” he said. “It is not appropriate to speculate in these circumstances.
“If you were to put yourselves in the shoes of a family, who would be clearly distraught about the loss of a small child, it paints a little bit of a different picture.
“We understand that there’s going to be keyboard detectives out there who have these various theories, but everything we know at this point in time is that Gus wandered away from the property and we have not been able to find him.
The family’s remote 60,000ha station rolls out in red dirt and bluebush beneath a vast sky – land that looks flat from afar but hides gullies, dry creek beds and twisting tracks that vanish into scrub.
Each day, at least 50 people – police, SES volunteers, Australian Defence Force personnel and local station owners – scoured the vast property.
Line-search teams on foot walked up to 25km a day.
The only trace uncovered was a single bootprint, found 500m north of the homestead on Tuesday, though police have since downplayed its significance, suggesting that it may have been left a week earlier.
Polair helicopters have swept low over the plains, police divers have plunged into every dam and water tank, and mounted officers have picked through the hollows of dry creek beds – but nothing else was found.
The family residence has been searched for the third time to ensure no clues have been missed.
On Friday morning, the number of police officers and vehicles surrounding the homestead was reduced significantly.
However, an SES foot search team scoured a scrapyard near the home, while another team in all-terrain-vehicles went through the dense scrub once more.
Meanwhile, a small group of soldiers was seen driving north of the property – but army personnel appeared to have cleared out by early afternoon. The decision to scale down the search came after police on Thursday prepared Gus’s family for the worst, telling them that it was transitioning into a recovery mission.
