Gus Lamont mineshaft search continues as police double search force and heartbreaking theories revealed
New heartbreaking theories have emerged as police doubled their numbers in the mineshaft search for the four-year-old boy missing in the SA Outback.
Police will on Wednesday wind up their latest search for missing four-year-old Gus Lamont after finding nothing in a string of deserted mine shafts – but detectives aren’t ruling out returning.
It comes as one expert said the mineshaft search suggests authorities are “looking at possible intervention”.
Specialist officers spent 10 hours scouring six old shafts on Tuesday and the next day they were out again, this time searching on foot in the scrub around the family’s isolated homestead.
The shafts, sitting between 5.5km and 12km from where Gus vanished, were searched without a single clue emerging.
Some were shallow enough to be inspected by eye.
Others dropped as deep as 20 metres, forcing crews to lower specialist equipment into pitch-black holes.
On Wednesday, STAR Group officers and Task Force Horizon detectives walked rugged ground up to 10km northeast of the homestead, never searched before.
Police said those areas sit well beyond the 5.5km radius already subjected to exhaustive ground searches in earlier operations.
Gus’ devastated family has been told there has been no breakthrough and is being supported by a victim contact officer.
Despite another heartbreaking setback, police have not ruled out returning to the property as the desperate search for Gus continues.
The search on Wednesday was almost double Tuesday’s turnout, when just four cars of officers spent 10 gruelling hours searching remote shafts without finding a trace of the four-year-old.
Former homicide detective Gary Jubelin, who spoke to the Today show and is not involved in the search, said the distance of the shafts shows police are keeping all possibilities open.
“I would suggest 60 days in, I think they would look back at all the information they’ve got and explore all opportunities,” he said.
“But the fact that they’re searching so far away from where Gus first disappeared suggests to me they’re looking at possible intervention.”
Criminologist Xanthe Mallett said she doubts investigators genuinely expect to find Gus in these shafts and believes they are simply “covering all bases”.
“They’ve made it very clear that they’ve found no evidence of third-party involvement or any crime but 5 to 12 kilometres is a really long distance for a small child to travel,” she said.
“My sense is they’re just dotting their i’s. They’ve been told about these mine shafts and, honestly, I’m surprised they didn’t know earlier given you’d expect a full assessment of the risks in the area.
“But now they know, they have to look. It would be negligent not to. I don’t know if they realistically think they’ll find Gus there but they have to rule it out.”
Despite the grim task, Dr Mallett doesn’t believe this latest effort marks the “last chance” to find Gus.
“They need to find this little boy,” she said.
“If this is unsuccessful, they’ll go back to the drawing board and triage the next area. More intelligence could still come forward.”
On Tuesday, as officers spent hours in the heat during the first day of their painstaking search, SA falcon expert Paul Willcock dismissed theories being spread online that a wedge-tailed eagle could have taken little Gus.
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Originally published as Gus Lamont mineshaft search continues as police double search force and heartbreaking theories revealed
