WA police investigating Cleo Smith’s disappearance say they want to speak to the driver of a car that left between 3:00 a.m. and 3:30 a.m. on the morning the four-year-old disappeared from a campsite north of Carnarvon Blowholes Road turns south.
Detectives believe Cleo was taken out of her family’s tent in the early hours of Saturday morning.
On Sunday afternoon, Det Supt Rod Wilde said the reported sighting of the car was a “very new development” in the investigation.
“We want the person or people who were in this vehicle to report and contact the police,” said Wilde.
“We want to know who they were and what they did.”
However, Wilde emphasized that the driver was not a suspect.
Cleo was last seen by her parents at around 1:30 a.m. last Saturday. Her mother Ellie Smith said she woke up around 6 a.m. to find the little girl was missing.
It was confirmed that the tent’s zipper was unzipped to a height Cleo could not have reached, eliminating the possibility that she wandered off on her own. Her red and black sleeping bag is also missing.
Wilde said the witnesses who reported seeing the car were “credible sources”.
He also called anyone camping nearby to call the police last weekend.
“There are still people out there we want to catch up with and talk to,” said Wilde.
On Thursday, the WA government issued a $ 1 million reward for information about Cleo’s whereabouts.
Prior to this, WA Prime Minister Mark McGowan said every resource was directed towards finding Cleo and he urged everyone with information to come forward.
“We all feel for her and her family and just want to make sure we find her as soon as possible and that we make every effort to trace her whereabouts so the family can find out where she is,” McGowan said on Sunday .
At the same press conference, Commissioner Chris Dawson said the police would “carefully go over every vehicle movement” and every forensic evidence.
“This is a large-scale investigation, but it is in a remote location,” said Dawson.
“So in a way, we have an opportunity here to make a very large footprint on anyone who was in the area at the time. It is that kind of investigation and effort that we are grasping now. “
