{"id":219280,"date":"2026-01-06T07:49:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T07:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/219280\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T07:49:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T07:49:07","slug":"update-in-grim-search-for-victoria-boy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/219280\/","title":{"rendered":"Update in grim search for Victoria boy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Australian police say they &#8220;won&#8217;t rest&#8221; in their search for answers after returning to a remote station where a four-year-old boy vanished months ago.<\/p>\n<p>Gus Lamont was last seen by his grandmother playing on a mound of dirt at the sprawling sheep station in outback South Australia on September 27.<\/p>\n<p>Detective Superintendent Darren Fielke said detectives had returned to the property last week and spoken to Gus&#8217; family, who were continuing to co-operate with police.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That is not a simple investigation,&#8221; the major crime chief said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a four-year-old boy in a remote area. We&#8217;re exploring all avenues to do with locating Gus. Nothing is off the table.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We won&#8217;t rest until we&#8217;re satisfied that we&#8217;ve done absolutely everything we can to find him, and if we&#8217;ve done everything we can and we can&#8217;t find him, then that sometimes is what will happen.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The boy&#8217;s disappearance sparked intensive searches spanning almost 500sqkm by hundreds of people using aerial support and mounted units.<\/p>\n<p>Detectives last week took further statements from the family.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s just part of the normal investigational process that we go through,&#8221; Fielke said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They went through a pretty torrid Christmas, obviously, without Gus, and we&#8217;re checking the family regularly.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In November, search teams focused on six mine shafts near property, 40km south of Yunta, using specialist officers, but found no trace of Gus.<\/p>\n<p>A four-day search within a 5.5km radius of the homestead in early October also concluded without any evidence.<\/p>\n<p>The family previously expressed their devastation over the boy&#8217;s disappearance in a September 30 statement.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This has come as a shock to our family and friends, and we are struggling to comprehend what has happened,&#8221; it said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Gus&#8217; absence is felt in all of us, and we miss him more than words can express.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our hearts are aching, and we are holding onto hope that he will be found and returned to us safely.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian police say they &#8220;won&#8217;t rest&#8221; in their search for answers after returning to a remote station where&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1081,85,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-219280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-accident","tag-australia","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}