As the search for little Gus Lamont resumes and his devoted grandparents hold out hope of finding him, police and other experts have warned against spreading harmful misinformation online
The family of missing August ‘Gus’ Lamont have had to deal with yet more heartache after cruel misinformation about his disappearance was widely spread online.
Four-year-old Gus vanished from his grandparents’ remote homestead in the South Australian outback on Saturday, September 27. The little boy was last seen at around 5 pm that evening, playing on a dirt mound on the 60,000ha Yunta property, located almost 200 miles north-east of Adelaide.
Around 30 minutes later, his grandmother called out for Gus to come inside, only to find he wasn’t there. A major search ensued for the child, with his distinctive mop of blonde curls, in what is understood to be the biggest search effort in the state’s history.
Sadly, although loved ones hold out hope of bringing Gus home alive and well, police have scaled back their search, believing it unlikely that young Gus would have survived out in the wilderness by himself.
As questions remain, keyboard sleuths have come forward with some theories of their own, with some being sickening hoaxes.
READ MORE: Missing four-year-old boy’s devastated grandparents break silence with defiant five words
AI Image
A number of social media users have been taken in by an AI-generated image which purports to show an “unfamiliar man” bundling Gus into a vehicle.
One fake social media post, which has been shared more than 24,000 times, claimed: “An eyewitness reports seeing a boy matching Gus Lamont’s description with an unfamiliar man in a car about 100km from Yunta.”
In light of this, missing persons expert Dr Sarah Wayland highlighted the challenges such widely available technology poses. Cautioning people to verify any information before sharing, Dr Wayland told The Advertiser: “When the community engages with these sites, pause and consider who is sharing the information, whether it’s verified by SAPOL, and what the usual focus of that page is.”
Cruel false hope
ABC News Australia, which undertook several searches using Facebook’s AI search engine, reports that one inaccurate Meta AI search summary claimed Gus had been “found alive after a massive search operation in the South Australian outback”.
A spokesperson for South Australia Police issued the following statement: “Police urge caution when using artificial intelligence in internet searches and recommend cross-referencing the information with trusted sources.”
Footprint riddle
So far, the only possible trace of Gus is a single footprint, found some 500 metres from his grandparents’ home. However, it’s not clear whether the singular footprint belongs to the missing youngster.
Expressing how unusual it is to find just one footprint, local tracker Aaron Stuart told the Adelaide Advertiser: “You’d find the next one, and the one after that. You don’t find one track, you find tracks.”
Meanwhile, emergency services worker Jason O’Connell, who covered more than 1,200km as part of the search team alongside his partner Jen, has stated that he is “very doubtful” that Gus is still on the property, as a lifeless body would have attracted birds of prey.
He told the Mail Online: “No birds of prey means he’s not there. It’s just wide, open land. There’s really not much there, and I’m surprised because we just didn’t find anything. He’s not on that property.”
Bizarre ‘psychics’
The case has attracted plenty of psychics, who have seemingly exploited the heartbeaking mising persons case to to promote their unfounded theories online.
One purported clairvoyant, who posts via the TikTok account spookyt, has expressed the belief that Gus is “very much alive”, adding that she doesn’t feel “he has wandered far at all”.
In a bizarre two-minute clip, the psychic shared how she had visualised a massive pile of dirt and tin, expressing the belief that Gus had “actually fallen and hit his head” and remains “really close to the house somehow”.
Police bombshell
On October 3, almost a week after Gus vanished, police issued an update, sharing that they would be downgrading the search, in the tragic likelihood that Gus was no longer alive.
South Australian Assistant Police Commissioner Ian Parrott said at the time: “While we’ve all been hoping for a miracle, that miracle was not eventuated. And in the last 48 hours, despite the professional advice it being unlikely that Gus would have survived, we have maintained and in fact increased the effort to try and locate him and bring him back to his family.
“We’re confident that we’ve done absolutely everything we can to locate Gus within the search area, but 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.
“We won’t stop, we will continue to investigate and follow any lines of inquiry that we currently have… but everything that we have found to date, every piece of information and evidence that we have explored to date, indicates that, as best as we know, Gus has wandered off from this property and we have not been able to locate him.”
But in a shock U-turn, police confirmed on Monday that they would in fact be resuming their search. They will carry out the new investigation near the Oak Station homestead, about 300km north of Adelaide.
The search, which resumes on Tuesday (14th) will focus on an expanded area outside of a places already searched following his disappearance.
Grandparents’ defiance
After the search was downgraded earlier this month, Gus’s grandma, Josie Murray, revealed that the family remained hopeful, despite the amount of time that had passed. She confirmed: “We’re still looking for him”, before declining any help with search efforts, telling reporters, “You can’t help. We are still dealing with this.”
Speaking with the Adelaide Advertiser, one neighbour said: “I know this family very well and they don’t want people turning up and having to just deal with that. Even if the people are well-meaning and sympathetic, they just want peace and quiet and to try and work out for themselves what’s actually happened.”
Do you have a story to share? Email me at julia.banim@reachplc.com
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