Missing Montreal boy feared dead, police say

Besides the diving, police have gone door to door in the neighbourhood and used horses, the canine unit, all-terrain vehicles and a helicopter to search the area.

Police said they had received 700 tips and that a command post was still in place at a shopping centre near where Ariel disappeared.

On Thursday, Lafreniere said police would maintain a “sporadic” presence on the water in the next few days.

Lafrenière said that as a father of young children, he had difficulty imagining what Ariel’s parents — Frederic Kouakou and Akouena Noëlla Bibie — were going through. The parents have maintained they are convinced their boy was abducted.

Lafrenière said considerable resources had been used to explore that possibility, but that investigators had uncovered no evidence to suggest Ariel was kidnapped.

Kouakou said he was “astonished” to hear about the police theory, which he learned about through the media.

“For me, it’s confusion, because my family and I, until proof to the contrary, maintain the theory of abduction,” he told reporters.

The father said the boy’s absence had devastated the entire family.

“The more the days pass, the more it’s unbearable,” he said.

His wife could no longer stay strong, he said, and his daycare-aged daughter recently asked him where her brother was.

“This question comes from a little girl,” he said. “How can I comfort her? I don’t have the words.”