As the desperate search for little Gus Lamont continues, police have made a worrying admission after making a huge U-turn on the mammoth rescue operation
A new search for a little boy who vanished without a trace from his grandparents’ rural property is underway, but police have given a tragic warning.
It’s been 18 long days since four-year-old Gus Lamont went missing from a remote homestead in the South Australian outback. 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 gran called out for Gus to come inside, only to discover he wasn’t there. A major hunt ensued for the child, with his distinctive mop of blonde curls, in what is believed to be the biggest search effort in the state’s history. The only thing searchers found was a single footprint.
READ MORE: Sick twist emerges after Gus Lamont, 4, vanished without a trace from grandparentsREAD MORE: Missing four-year-old boy’s devastated grandparents break silence with defiant five words
Almost a week after Gus vanished, police said that they would be downgrading the search, in the tragic likelihood that he was no longer alive. Then, in a major U-turn last week, police confirmed that they would be resuming their search, sparking fresh hopes for the young lad’s family.
The operation, which resumed on Tuesday, is focusing on an expanded area outside of a places already searched following Gus’ disappearance. And now the authorities have issued another update on their renewed efforts.
Heartbreakingly, the search team has not found any new evidence since they resumed the hunt for answers, and they have been met with arduous conditions over the last two days.
“More than 100 search team members, including SA Police, ADF members and SES volunteers have each been walking between 20 and 25 kilometres each day in hot, harsh conditions,” a police spokesperson said on Wednesday, according to NewsAu.
“The second day … has concluded with no evidence being located. With temperatures of 36 degrees and strong northerly winds expected in the search area on (Thursday), searching is expected to start at sunrise and conclude at midday.”
They new investigation is being carried out near the Oak Station homestead, about 300km north of Adelaide.
It comes as the missing boy’s family have had to deal with yet more heartache after cruel misinformation about his disappearance was widely spread online.
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.”
The case has also 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”.
Earlier this month, Gus’ grandparents broke their silence with a defiant statement after the search for Gus was initially downgraded.
Gus’s grandma, Josie Murray, said the family was still hopeful. “We’re still looking for him,” she said. She then declined any assistance with the search effort. “You can’t help. We are still dealing with this,” she said.