Cleo Smith and her family spent her first night at home after their terrifying 18-day ordeal snuggled up together as they celebrated her miraculous rescue.
WA Deputy Police Commissioner Col Blanch said Cleo and her family slept in the same room on Wednesday evening and ‘cuddled all night’.
Mr Blanch said her parents are relieved to have their little girl home after police beat the odds to find Cleo safe and alive.
‘Ellie and Jake had been through 18 days of hell and I know Australia have felt that with them,’ he told 2GB‘s Ben Fordham on Thursday.
‘They had a small amount of hope, but I thought they probably thought they were never going to give her a cuddle again.
Cleo Smith (pictured) was miraculously found alive about 1am on Wednesday inside a Carnavon home after detectives received a tip off from the public
‘I’m pretty sure they all slept in the same room just cuddling all night.’
West Australian police officers found the missing four-year-old girl at a Carnarvon home about 1am on Wednesday, almost three weeks after she vanished.
Terry Kelly, 36, who was not in the home when it was raided, has been arrested in connection with Cleo’s abduction from her parents’ tent at Blowholes campsite, 74km away, on October 16.
Commissioner Blanch said detectives received new information about her location late on Tuesday and moved swiftly to rescue little girl.
He said hardened detectives were emotional after discovering of the missing toddler alive inside the locked house.
‘Four fathers walked into that room… they might have been wearing guns and detective suits but they were four fathers,’ he said.
‘They have been looking at Cleo’s face for 18 days, working 24/7. Everyone knows how they felt.’
WA Deputy Police Commissioner Col Blanch has revealed the joyous family slept together in the same room and ‘cuddled all night’ after her incredible rescue
WA Police Deputy Commissioner Col Blanch (pictured) said the family were relieved to be reunited
Mr Blanch said cases like Cleo’s, which bring ‘pure joy’ from ‘saving people’s lives’, are the reason officers join the police force.
While police are remaining tight lipped about key details due to the ongoing investigation, Commissioner Chris Dawson said ‘phone data was critical’ in cracking the case open.
Police had toiled away with few leads until they received a sudden tip-off on Tuesday night containing ‘really important information about a car’.
Detectives confirmed it with phone data and ‘a lot of forensic leads’ – and just hours later raided the house.
Mr Kelly’s neighbours have described him as ‘quiet’ and a ‘loner’, but say they are shocked by his arrest.
The 36-year-old reportedly sustained head injuries after he was allegedly attacked by another prisoner in a police holding cell on Wednesday and was taken to hospital for treatment.
In the early hours of the morning, police smashed through the locked door of a home (pictured) in the Brockman suburb of Carnarvon, Western Australia, to rescue the four year old
The 36-year-old man (pictured) was taken to hospital after reportedly sustaining head injuries in custody on Wednesday
Mr Blanch said he was taken to hospital for a second time on Thursday morning, but there are no serious injuries.
Cleo was reunited with her family shortly after being found before being taken to hospital to receive care.
Photos shared by Western Australia Police on Wednesday afternoon showed the toddler smiling from her hospital bed as she ate an icypole.
Detective Superintendent Rod Wilde, who led the missing person investigation, announced on Wednesday afternoon Cleo ‘is physically OK’ and had since been released from hospital to be with her mother and stepfather Jake Gliddon.
Police feared Cleo could have been spirited away to anywhere in the country – but instead she was under their noses all along just 3km from her home and 75km from the campsite.
Cleo was likely already locked up in the house when her parents awoke at 6am to find she was no longer lying next to them and her baby sister Isla in their tent.
Daily Mail Australia understands a local police officer rang Cleo’s mother to break the incredible news.
Ms Smith wrote on Instagram hours later: ‘Our family is whole again.’
Cleo is now back in the arms of her mum Ellie and stepfather Jake (pictured together)
The first picture of Cleo Smith, safe and sound in hospital, after she was rescued from a house in Carnarvon, in northwest Western Australia, where she was held for 18 days
A close family friend also revealed the emotional message Ms Smith earlier wrote to her loved ones to let them know her ‘beautiful girl is home’.
‘To be woken at 4.50am with my phone going crazy and see the words Cleo is home alive and safe,’ she wrote on Facebook.
‘Seeing Ellie saying her ‘beautiful girl is home’ is nothing short of a miracle.’
Locals in the street where Cleo Smith was held prisoner for 18 days missed telltale signs their ‘oddball’ neighbour was allegedly keeping the little girl captive her after a brazen abduction.
Residents in Tonkin Crescent where she was imprisoned admit they didn’t connect the dots and report key clues that could have led police to the home days earlier.
She’s alive, well, smiling, so it is a wonderful, wonderful result
Sahntayah McKenzie recalled hearing a little girl crying one night, but did not think anything of it at the time.
‘Not last night, the night before it… I heard a little girl crying but I wouldn’t expect it to be Cleo,’ she told the West Australian.
‘I didn’t expect it would happen in this little neighbourhood, a lot of people know each other.’
It’s reported that police were tipped off to the address after neighbours spotted the suspect buying nappies.
One of them told Seven News he became suspicious after seeing the suspect buying Kimbies nappies from a supermarket.
‘The other day, I think it was Monday, we saw him in Woolworths buying nappies but we didn’t click on who it was or what he was buying them for,’ she said. ‘Until now.’
Another neighbour told Nine he had spotted the arrested man behaving bizarrely in recent days, hooning through the streets with his dogs in the front seat of his car.
‘He’s been acting a bit strange lately,’ Henry Dodd told Nine News. ‘He will get in his car, drive that fast.
A sign thanking police for finding Cleo Smith is seen on the main road into Carnarvon on November 3
‘He doesn’t have his dogs at the front [normally], he has his dogs out the back, but through this week he had his dogs out the front and he has been acting weird.’
Henry Dodd said police spent several hours driving up and down the street before breaking into the home.
‘Everyone that knows the person that stays in that house, wouldn’t think that it would be him,’ he said.
‘We got a shock ourselves that it was him.’
One neighbour told the Today show: ‘S**t, she’s been that close’, while other local described the man in custody as an ‘oddball’.
‘He is a very quiet guy, bit of an oddball… definitely wouldn’t have picked him… it has completely derailed me,’ Rennee Turner said.
‘I’d heard whispers… I kind of figured the police might have had an idea of what was going on, because I have never seen such a massive amount of cops here for so long.’
Others said he in recent weeks bought food he didn’t usually buy, and that he moved his dog that usually stayed in the backyard to the front yard.
Neighbours who witnessed the dramatic police raid, after which officers were seen carrying a crow bar and a battering ram out of the house, described how Cleo was carried to safety.
Neighbours of the home where little Cleo Smith (pictured) was allegedly kept prisoner before she was rescued by police on Wednesday have revealed the tell-tale signs they missed
‘We stood back and waited but after that, we saw someone, on the detective shoulder. We thought it might be the little girl, which it was,’ Henry Dodd told Seven News.
‘I went closer to the detectives car and I saw her in the back of the car with the detective, he was holding her. They put her in the back and I came over, rushed over here and seen her there. She looked at me, a bit scared.’
Mr Dodd said he was shocked he had been just metres away from her while the nationwide hunt was going on for her.
‘I just can’t believe it and get over the fact that she is just the house down from us and locked up here for a couple of weeks,’ he added.
‘Going on three weeks, she is straight across from us. I’ve got little sisters there…’
What happened to Cleo in the house where she was held captive for more than two weeks, without her family, is yet to be determined, but psychologists said she would have a long road to recovery.
Police Air Wing PC12 picked up the suspect, who has no relation to Cleo’s family, from Carnarvon and landed at Perth’s Jandakot Airport late on Wednesday morning.
One neighbour Henry (pictured) said he had spotted the arrested man behaving unusually in recent days, hooning through the streets in his car with his dogs in the front seat
Police Commissioner Chris Dawson was on board the plane and will spend the day meeting with police involved in the rescue and checking in with Cleo’s family.
The police chief broke down in tears upon learning the heartwarming news. He said Cleo was as good as can be expected.
‘I saw the vision, Cleo is a beautiful little four-year-old girl,’ he said.
‘She’s as well as we could expect in the circumstances. She’s alive, well, smiling, so it is a wonderful, wonderful result.’
He said Cleo’s parents were emotional but doing well.
‘They’re strong people, they are really strong people. They have good support around them,’ Commissioner Dawson said.
‘It’s a wonderful result today but it’ll be a tough journey for them.’