Missing Australian girl found in locked house
Cleo was last seen in her family’s tent on October 16
A4-year-old girl who went missing from an Australian outback campsite more than two weeks ago has been returned safely to her parents after she was rescued by police from a locked house.
Police broke into a house in Carnarvon, a town about 100km south of the campsite, early yesterday and found Cleo Smith in one of the rooms. “One of the officers picked her up into his arms and asked her ‘what’s your name?’. She said ‘My name is Cleo’,” Western Australia Police Deputy Commissioner Col Blanch told media. A man has been taken into custody in relation to the disappearance, he said.
Cleo was last seen in her family’s tent in the early hours of October 16 at the remote Blowholes Shacks campsite in Macleod, about 900km north of Perth, the capital of Western Australia state.
When her parents woke in the morning, she was gone.
Police had feared the girl had been abducted and offered a A$1 million reward for any information leading to her whereabouts.