When four-year-old Gus Lamont vanished without a trace from his family’s homestead in South Australia’s harsh landscape, one of the country’s biggest searches began.
Gus disappeared on September 27 and the urgency to find him has only intensified.
Find out the latest about the case below.
Has Gus Lamont been found?
Sadly, he hasn’t been found yet.
On February 5, South Australian Police declared the disappearance a “major crime” – with authorities confirming their search is the “largest and most intensive undertaken by SA Police in connection to a missing person”.
Hundreds of police officers and volunteers have been involved in the search, as well as The Australian Defence Force.
The search has extended to a radius of more than five kilometres of the home, with three dams and even mine shafts searched.
“Sadly, despite our efforts we have not yet been able to locate Gus,” Darren Fielke, the Major Crime Investigation Branch officer-in-charge Detective Superintendent, said.
A person with close ties to the family household, who is not one of his parents, has been identified as a suspect in the disappearance, according to 9News.
Police confirmed the person was speaking with detectives but then “withdrew co-operation”, and has now been identified as a suspect.
When did Gus Lamont go missing?
He was last seen on September 27 at 5 pm, playing on a mound of dirt near his family’s Oak Park Station homestead, which is approximately 43 kilometres south of the Yunta township.
Half an hour later, his grandmother went outside to call him, but he was nowhere to be seen.
A family member told South Australian Police that he had never left the family property before, and he was a shy child, but adventurous.
Theories about his disappearance
While the police worked off the theory that he wandered off, criminologist Xanthe Mallett told our sister publication Woman’s Day that she was worried that another party was involved.
“In that kind of terrain, Gus should’ve been fairly easy to locate had he simply wandered off,” she said.
“But there’s been no sign of him, so you have to think, at this stage, that there’s been third-party intervention, sadly.”
Hours after an intense and desperate search, his family called the police at 8.30pm.
SES volunteers, police, and members of the Australian Army then extensively searched more than 60,000 hectares by air and ground.
A small footprint was found around a dam about 5.5 kilometres west of the homestead, but it was discovered not to be related to Gus.
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