The frantic search for a four-year-old who went missing from a regional property in South Australia has entered its sixth day, with polcie shifting their focus into a “recovery phase”.
August, also known as “Gus”, was last seen playing in sand at his family’s sheep station, about 40km south of Yunta, about 5pm on Saturday.
‘Recovery phase’
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Yorke Mid North Superintendent Mark Syrus said police had grave fears for the boy, who has been missing for almost a week without access to food or water, and had changed their rescue into a “recovery phase”.
“A four-year-old doesn’t disappear into thin air, he has to be somewhere,” he said.
“Hopefully, he’s hanging in there alive, but we are now in recovery phase, and the fact he’s been gone over 100 hours and six days, that’s a long time to be out in the elements.”
Police released an image of the missing boy sitting at a table, featuring his light blond curly hair and hazel eyes, wearing a shirt with a Peppa Pig logo, stars and My Mummy written across the front.
Former neighbour speaks out
Former neighbour Royce Player told reporters on Thursday that he thought rescuers “might’ve found him by now”.
“Doesn’t take much, and if he’s frightened he’ll be hiding. Let’s hope he’s still out there,” he said.
Mr Player said the child was small, and could be easily missed if the rescue team was stretched metres apart.
“He’s not very big, so it doesn’t hurt to backtrack and go over your tracks several times,” he said.
Mr Player used to live next door to the family and dropped everything to help the search efforts.
“I thought ‘bugger this’ last night – I gotta do something,” he said, adding the little boy just “wants his mum”.
“I’m a parent, so yeah … well, I don’t know what it would be like, but I wouldn’t like to go through it myself.”
ADF and skilled tracker called in
His disappearance has sparked a major search effort involving dozens of police, volunteers and rescue teams, who have been scouring the regional property and its surrounds for almost a week.
Five days into the search, police announced about 50 Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel and a skilled tracker had been called in for assistance.
An ADF spokesman said they had “accepted a formal request” from the police to assist in the search and sent 48 personnel.
“Defence has accepted a formal request from South Australia Police to assist in the search for a missing four-year-old boy near Yunta in the east of South Australia,” the spokesman told NewsWire.
Questions raised after footprint breakthrough
Police delivered a breakthrough on Wednesday after a child’s footprint was discovered about 500m from his homestead.
“We’ve positively identified that it’s a child’s footprint,” Superintendent Syrus told ABC radio on Wednesday.
“It’s a very similar boot pattern to what Gus was wearing when he went missing.”
Despite the breakthrough, he told reporters on Thursday the footprint may have not been recent.
“That could have been there for a week,” he said.
“We’ve got to be careful we don’t funnel all our attention on that one little clue.”
