Million-dollar reward to find ‘abducted’ girl, 6
Australian police have offered a reward of A$1 million (NZ$1.04 million) to find a four-year-old girl who disappeared from her sleeping family’s tent at a remote campsite.
Cleo Smith vanished in the early hours of Saturday at an isolated but popular coastal site called the Blowholes, 1000km north of Perth. Police are convinced that she was abducted. A search involving hundreds of police, the military and volunteers has found no trace.
The A$1 million reward for any details leading to the discovery of Cleo was announced by the premier of Western Australia, Mark McGowan, in a nationwide appeal for information.
The state’s deputy police commissioner, Col Blanch, said that the force had grave fears for Cleo’s safety.
‘‘We have got 100 police on this task force. We have got the nation looking for Cleo. That’s what’s important here. It’s not just up to police to find Cleo, this is why we are making a public appeal,’’ he said. ‘‘Someone in our community knows what happened.
‘‘Someone has the knowledge that can help.’’
Cleo’s mother, Ellie Smith, has insisted that her daughter would not have left the family’s tent alone. Yesterday
police said the evidence pointed to the child having been snatched from the tent during the night at the Blowholes campsite, north of the small farming town of Carnarvon.
Cleo’s sleeping bag also disappeared and police said that the zipper to her section of the tent was opened to a height that the little girl could not have reached on her own.
Hundreds of people, including scores of known sex offenders, have been interviewed but police have no firm leads on what became of Cleo, described as ‘‘beautiful and delicate’’ by her distraught mother.
She was in the tent with her younger sister Isla, her mother and her mother’s long-term partner, Jake Gliddon, when she disappeared.
Superintendent Rod Wilde, who is leading the police task force, said there were ‘‘grave fears’’ for Cleo’s safety.