‘She didn’t run away’: Australian Cleo (4) disappears overnight during camping trip | Abroad

Mum Ellie Smith and partner Jake Gledon described in their first interview with Australian media the moment they realized the girl had disappeared. “The zip for the tent was open and I went,” her mother said. Cleo was sleeping beside her newborn sister’s bed. “The tent was fully open, I turned around and said to Jake, I’m gone.”

The couple exclude that Cleo himself went for a walk. “She’s too lazy when it comes to walking,” says Elle, crying. “She won’t leave the tent by herself.” From the moment they found out that Cleo was gone, they searched for her on foot and by car. Then the police were called. She describes the past few days as “horrific”. Both could hardly sleep.

The family’s camping trip took place in the Australian wilderness last weekend. Cleo and her parents – Jake not her biological father – set up with their tent at a small, open camp site in Macleod, a place where they often camp, about 900 kilometers north of Perth and about 70 kilometers from Carnarvon where the family lives.

On Saturday night around 1:30 a.m., the girl was last seen by Mother Ellie in their shared tent. I asked for a sip of water. Then she went to sleep in her pink pajamas with butterflies and flowers, snug in her red-green sleeping bag. Then, when Ellie and Jake woke up around 6:30 a.m., their daughter was gone (as was her sleeping bag).

“It’s been more than 24 hours since I’ve seen my little girl’s eyes sparkle,” Cleo’s worried mother wrote on social media on Sunday. “Please help me find it.” The police are very concerned about the girl’s condition and are not ruling out any scenario. So it is not so that the girl was taken out of the tent at night by someone else or that she went to the beach and the sea by herself.

After Cleo’s disappearance, the police began a large-scale search. Since Sunday morning, officers have been combing the area around the camp site along with soldiers and volunteers from the neighborhood. “We don’t leave anything to chance,” Detective John Munday said. Helicopters, drones and divers were deployed, but high winds and rain thwarted the investigation Tuesday morning. The search was resumed by midday local time.

“We have put our best personnel into the investigation of this missing person,” Munday said. “I wish I had some answers for the family, but unfortunately we don’t. As time goes by, the days go by, and our fears only get worse,” he said. Since then, Daniel Staines, Cleo’s biological father, has been questioned by the police, but this is standard procedure. Nor There is evidence of his involvement in the disappearance of the girl.