The Australian Defence Force has joined the search for missing boy Gus, which is entering its sixth day in outback South Australia — but police say there have been no further traces “of any footprints in the area”.
Four-year-old Gus has been missing since Saturday. (Supplied: SAPOL)
Almost 50 ADF personnel joined the search on Thursday morning, about 40 kilometres south of Yunta, where four-year-old Gus was last seen playing in sand at his homestead about 5pm on Saturday.
On Thursday afternoon SAPOL released the first image of Gus.
On Tuesday authorities found a shoe print about 500 metres from the homestead, and described it as having a “very similar boot pattern to what Gus was wearing when he went missing”.
That breakthrough was followed by the deployment of an Aboriginal tracker.
The search for Gus is entering the sixth day. (ABC News: Daniel Taylor)
But Superintendent Mark Syrus, the officer in charge of the Yorke and Mid North region, said that despite the footprint clue, no “other evidence” was discovered on Wednesday.
He added the footprint could be from before the boy went missing.
“We just have got to be careful that we don’t funnel all our attention on that one little clue. We have still got to look at the big picture and continue on looking at areas where he possibly could have gone,” he said.
“A four-year-old lad, they just don’t disappear into thin air. They have to be somewhere. So our job is to try and find which way he’s gone and once we find those little clues, then it gives a bit of an idea.”
Earlier, he told ABC Radio Adelaide that “unfortunately” in the searches yesterday no more footprints had been found.
“He [the tracker] couldn’t find any other traces of any footprints in the area, which he said was really unusual,” he told ABC Radio Adelaide.
“We keep on reviewing our search patterns, and we’ve actually gone back to the homestead and we’ve searched it again for a third time. We scoured this whole area again, just on the off-chance he’s still within the 200 or 300 metres of the property here.”
A footprint police believe could belong to four-year-old Gus. (Supplied: SA Police)
But police cautioned that there were no guarantees the footprint was even from Saturday.
“We’ve got to remember that he [Gus] actually lives on the property and that might have been a footprint that he might have left there a couple of days ago, even before he went missing,” Superintendent Syrus said.
While the print was found near a road, Superintendent Syrus said he thought it was “highly unlikely” anyone else was involved in Gus’s disappearance.
“That’s another theory we do think about. At the start of any searches, we have an investigational component to it,” he said.
“Yesterday, we had detectives up here speaking with people; they left yesterday. The road itself is not a public road — there’s six gates to go through to actually get to the property.
“It’s highly unlikely, but something the investigators are looking at.”
Superintendendent Syrus says the family is being prepared for the search to move to recovery. (ABC News: Daniel Taylor)
Earlier on Thursday, police said a contingent of 48 personnel from the ADF were being deployed to the area and would “assist police with ground searches over the coming days”, adding that each individual had been covering about 30 kilometres of territory every day.
“We’ve got the assistance of the Australian Defence Force, so we’ve got 48 Army personnel on scene,” he said.
“The search parties to date have done a fantastic job. They’ve been walking 30,000 to 40,000 steps every day, back to back, and we just wanted to give them a little bit of a break, bring in some fresh legs so that we can cover some more ground and just expand the search area out.”
On Wednesday, Superintendent Syrus said police had spoken to the family about potential outcomes.
“We always hold out hope that he’s a tough lad and he’s crawled under a bush and he’s still alive,” he said.
“But we’re just preparing the family for the fact that we may be moving from a search effort to a recovery.”
Forty police cadets joined the search on Tuesday, and members of SA Police’s Major Crime unit were on scene too, but Superintendent Syrus was quick to point out there was “no suggestion of anything suspicious”.
Trauma-informed approach
Sarah Wayland is an expert in missing persons and told ABC Radio North and West SA Breakfast that a trauma-informed response was needed, particularly when it came to online rhetoric.
Dr Wayland says online commentary can add to the trauma. (Supplied: Sarah Wayland)
“[Social media commenters can] say really hurtful and traumatic things in terms of what they believe might have happened to the child,” she said.
“That can be really devastating because we know, when I talk to families of missing people, they’re reading the comments.
“They’re not just dealing with the real trauma of what’s happening in real time, but also the imagined trauma of what everybody else is piling on with.”
While the search for Gus has been ongoing for several days, few clues have been found so far — something Dr Wayland said could be making online commentary worse for those impacted by the tragedy.
“When there are gaps in knowledge, that’s where the community, and sometimes some media outlets, will jump in and try and fill in the gaps,” she said.
“That’s where the trauma happens.”
She said a situation like this could have a significant effect on tight-knit regional towns, and that communities can “feel like they’re being viewed just as the space where this terrible incident occurred.”
“It becomes very quickly not so much about the person who’s missing … they become known just as the person who is missing,” she said.
Dr Wayland said a compassionate approach was needed.
“I think it’s really about holding some compassion and a trauma-informed approach here while we wait for news, rather than jumping to conclusions,” she said.
“Because unfortunately, like we know with short-term or long-term missing persons cases, you can never predict what the outcome is going to be.”