Missing three-year-old boy AJ Elfalak found alive at Putty
There have been tears of joy, incredulity and relief at a remote property in the NSW Hunter after toddler AJ Elfalak was found by a chopper crew. See the video here.
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Crying and calling out his name, this is the incredible moment Kelly Elfalak was reunited with her son AJ three days after he went missing near their isolated property in the Hunter.
Heartwarming video taken by an onlooker as AJ was reunited with his mum captured the raw emotion as an SES worker handed him over.
“My AJ, my AJ, look here at mummy,” Mrs Elfalak can be heard to say.
This is the moment Anthony ‘AJ’ Elfalak’s parents are reunited with the 3-year-old. Nothing short of a miracle. Just wow. pic.twitter.com/BLfNKZcPu1
— Adella Beaini (@adellabeaini) September 6, 2021
Wrapped in a blanket to keep him warm, three-year-old AJ was assessed by paramedics before being taken to Maitland Hospital where he is expected to spend the night.
He arrived at Maitland Hospital with, what appeared to be, his mother about 4.30pm.
They were whisked into the hospital as staff cordoned off the area from awaiting media.
He was still undergoing check-up as of 4.50pm. No other family had arrived.
The family is yet to speak to media waiting outside the hospital.
AJ was spotted by a police helicopter late on Monday morning, with video taken from on-board the chopper showing the moment the youngster was spotted in the bush.
His father Anthony said his son was found drinking water by a creek in a paddock about 500 metres from their house.
The toddler had minor injuries from falling over and being bitten by ants, and had nappy rash. AJ, who has autism and is non-verbal, was assessed by paramedics before being transferred to hospital.
Police helicopters spotted the boy in dense bushland as they flew along a nearby creek at Putty on Monday morning.
SES workers from Port Stephens then trekked into the bush to get him.
NSW police Superintendent Tracy Chapman said experts had suggested that dehydration was AJ’s biggest issue, and if he had access to water he would have a chance at survival.
“At approximately 11.30am today PolAir1 was flying over a ridge that has a creek bed through it in a valley,” Supt Chapman said.
“They noticed some movement and that’s what drew their attention. They came back around and went in and had a closer look and they were clearly able to identify a small boy, he was in a puddle in a creek bed, and he was drinking water at the time.
“I think (being) so close to water is what gave him that opportunity to survive.”
Late on Sunday officers searched a property at Bulga and seized a Ute - matching the description of one that was reportedly seen near the home at the time AJ went missing - and other vehicles. But all vehicles were returned to the property on Monday afternoon.
However Supt Chapman said investigations had not been finalised and a Strike Force set up to look into AJ’s investigation would continued to try and find answers as to what happened over the past 72 hours.
“Obviously from a policing perspective we will still be conducting our enquires to try and determine what took place over the last three days,” she said.
“I know everyone has lots of questions, I just really need to express my thanks to all of our partner agencies.
“I don’t understand what has happened with some footage however it’s subsequently part of our enquires still.”
Mr Elfalek said the idea of seeing his son and praying was what sustained him for days without sleep.
“It’s a miracle. It’s amazing,” he said.
“I haven’t slept for four days. For four days I’ve been running in the bush day and night for AJ and we found him, the guys found him,” Mr Elfalak said.
“They found him, he’s alive! That’s the power of prayer, that’s the power of God.”
For some days police had feared the worst, launching a criminal investigation into AJ’s disappearance.
A white dual-can ute similar to one relatives reported seeing nearby immediately after he went missing was seized on Sunday night.
Strike Force Jaylang was also launched to further the investigation, with Mr Elfalak praising the tireless efforts of police, SES and volunteers to find his son.
But in the end, he said all his little boy wanted was to be reunited with his mum.
“I just want to thank this team, NSW police, detectives, SES, ambos, everyone,” he said.
A large contingent of family and friends are waiting for a reunion with the three-year-old just several hundred metres away at the main home.
He was last seen on Friday playing on the porch as his mum Kelly said he was only out of her sight for a matter of seconds.
His grandmother fell to her knees and proclaimed how grateful she was to police and the search party.
“Thank you for everyone. Everyone support us. Everyone was good and kind … Thank you God,” she said.
AJ’s older brother Michael said he was “so happy” that his little brother had been discovered.
“At first I thought we’ll never find AJ then I thought ‘no, the helicopters will find him,” he said. “I’m going to hug him.”
“AJ’s the bravest baby we have ever had,” he said.
His parents were seen leaving the property to be reunited with their son.
Another relative collapsed and said: “We found AJ my baby! My baby AJ. We don’t know much but he’s been found alive.”
Another relative who had been searching the property for days said he was discovered on a creek bed.
“I didn’t realise the creek bed goes back further than the dam,” he said. “He’s doing well”
Family members say AJ is being attended to by paramedics but is in good spirits.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian said she was “absolutely delighted” by AJ’s discovery, saying it was “much-needed good news in otherwise difficult circumstances”.
“I mean, I think all of us have been crossing everything to make sure AJ is brought back safely,” she said.
Earlier on Monday, a family friend claimed that critical CCTV footage showing when missing boy AJ Elfalak was last seen vanished from the family’s newly-installed cameras.
Alan Hashem recently installed security cameras at the Yengo Drive, Putty property of the Elfalak family but said that footage from the time the autistic, non-verbal three-year-old disappeared has been erased.
Video of the days before and after AJ’’s disappearance remains intact but the time stamp from when he was last seen is gone.
“I installed cameras on that post right there. There’s footage missing, unexplained. Days before, days after but not during the time,” he told Nine.
Mr Hashem said the cameras were purposefully installed high to prevent footage being tampered with.
“You know what’s more alarming? We installed it so high you can’t tamper with it and we had two mechanisms of storage, cloud storage and physical storage and there’s no data in that timeslot. We provided the user name and password to the police, we provided them the actual original memory card. There’s a lot of explaining to do.”
The search for AJ resumed on Monday, a day after a ute was seized and an abandoned shack was declared a crime scene.
Hundreds of people returned to the remote property at Yengo Drive, Putty to scour dense bushland for a third day. Police, SES, Polair and the canine squad were all involved in the search.
Police seized a vehicle at a property 78 kilometres northeast of the boy’s home on Sunday following reports of a slow moving white ute driving away from the family’s property around the time AJ vanished.
Officers conducted forensic testing on the ute and were trying to determine who owns the vehicle and whether they are known to police.
Police haunted by the mistakes made in the first hours after the disappearance of William Tyrell had been treating the hunt for AJ as both a missing persons case and a potential homicide.
Forensic officers were early on into the family’s remote Upper Hunter home which is being treated as a crime scene as some of the same officers who were involved in the search for William Tyrell joined searchers and AJ’s family combing the 256ha property.
A police source said the forensic examination of their home was no reflection on AJ’s distraught parents but purely because of what was learned through three-year-old William’s disappearance when potential forensic evidence was lost or trampled on as hundreds of people joined the search around his foster family’s Kendall home in September 2014.
No trace of William, who was last seen playing in his foster grandmother’s yard, has been found.
“I saw it, it was driving really slowly, I thought it was my neighbours,” AJ’s distraught mother Kelly Elfalak told The Daily Telegraph.
“He’s not a wanderer.”
“He’s always holding my hand, he never leaves my side.
“Even when I’m cooking … he’s three and a half, how far could he walk?”
An abandoned shack about one kilometre from where the boy was last seen is also being forensically tested.
The Elfalak family have called the remote property home since moving from Sydney three months ago. It is only accessible by a dirt track which winds its way down into a valley
The thick bush and rocky outcrops surrounding the home are making the search difficult.
Members of AJ’s family joined police on the search on Sunday.
One officer was seen talking to the missing boy’s eight-year-old brother as he joined a group of people scouring the grassy hills near the family home.
AJ’s father Anthony Elfalak said in exasperation: “A kid doesn’t just up and disappear”.
“(It’s) very stressful times,” the father of four, said. “How do you think we’re feeling? We’re not doing too well.”
Family friend Alan Hashem, who was at the property when AJ went missing, recalled hearing the boy’s mother calling to her other sons: “’Where’s AJ?’”.
“Then we saw the white car about the same time,” Mr Hashem said. “Then everyone just jumped onto quadbikes (to look for him).”
Specially-trained investigators yesterday undertook a re-creation of a possible path AJ may have taken from the home, walking down the family’s winding driveway to a paddock across the road, led by AJ’s brother.
Much of the bush around the home remains untouched and is littered with caves, rocky outcrops, dams and creeks. “It’s tough country. A three-year-old could easily go missing, there’s wombat holes, caves, dams. It’s easy to think they could go missing,” one local said.
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