{"id":194418,"date":"2025-10-07T01:23:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T01:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/194418\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T01:23:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T01:23:11","slug":"gus-lamont-former-ses-volunteers-heartbreaking-claim-as-ground-search-for-four-year-old-is-called-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/194418\/","title":{"rendered":"Gus Lamont: Former SES volunteer\u2019s heartbreaking claim as ground search for four-year-old is called off"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shortly after police made the heartbreaking decision to call off the ground search for missing four-year-old Gus Lamont, a former SES volunteer involved in the effort has come forward with a gut-wrenching revelation.<\/p>\n

Gus wandered off from his family\u2019s sheep station property outside of Yunta around 5pm on September 27 and has not been seen since.<\/p>\n

All available emergency services, SES, the ADF and an army of volunteers scoured the area for days, while drones and helicopters attempted to find traces of the young boy from above.<\/p>\n

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One of the volunteers, who reportedly searched for 90 hours and covered more than 1200km of land, has now revealed that there is \u201czero evidence\u201d little Gus is on the property he vanished from.<\/p>\n

Jason O\u2019Connell combed through Oak Park Station with his wife Jen, telling The Advertiser<\/a>, \u201cit\u2019s just wide, open land.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s really not much there, and with our lights I\u2019m surprised because we just didn\u2019t find anything,\u201d the 50-year-old ex-SES volunteer said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s not on that property.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr O\u2019Connell, who is a wildlife carer, said the absence of birds of prey in the area was another troubling sign.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he was in a bad way or if he passed away, we\u2019d listen for foxes, look for birds of prey,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo birds of prey means he\u2019s not there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking to 7NEWS<\/a>, Mr O\u2019Connell said it\u2019s incredibly rare to not find a single trace of a person who has gone missing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just don\u2019t get how (Gus) vanished like that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"JasonJason O\u2019Connell believes there is zero evidence of Gus on the property. Credit: 7NEWS<\/p>\n

The little boy was last seen in a blue Minions shirt playing outside around 5pm on the evening of September 27. When his grandmother went to call him inside 30 minutes later, there was no sign of him.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, police made the call to hand over the investigation to the major crime squad.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe investigation will now be managed by the missing persons investigation section. This is where all long-term cases such as this are managed and investigated, and is standard practice,\u201d a South Australia Police spokesperson confirmed.<\/p>\n

The heartbreaking development came after police shifted their focus to a \u201crecovery phase\u201d after discussing the situation with Gus\u2019 parents.<\/p>\n

\u201cGus is a little four-year-old blond, curly hair, smiling face young fellow who has been missing from a farm property about 43km south of the township of Yunta since last Saturday,\u201d Assistant Commissioner Ian Parrott said at a media conference last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s been described as an adventurous child, shy, but he is also pretty good walker. But he\u2019s never left the family property with any distance previously that we\u2019re aware of.\u201d<\/p>\n

As each day has passed the chances of finding the little boy alive have diminished and police stated they think Gus has probably not survived.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom early Sunday morning, all the resources were involved in the search to that time were rapidly increased. Clearly everyone understands the urgency of a situation with a missing person, but particularly a four-year-old child,\u201d Mr Parrott said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has been ongoing and unwavering since that time and the search for Gus has probably been one of the largest, most intensive, searches for a missing person conducted in South Australia in recent times.\u201d<\/p>\n

The search has been one of largest in South Australia\u2019s history, with authorities covering over 47,000 hectares.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shortly after police made the heartbreaking decision to call off the ground search for missing four-year-old Gus Lamont,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[63,43,44,1124,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-194418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-australia","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-south-australia","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}