BREAKING NEWS: Police seize CCTV footage showing car speeding off from campground where Cleo Smith vanished at 3am
- The four-year-old was last seen in the early hours of October 16 at WA campsite
- Police investigating footage of a car driving down highway near camping ground
Police have seized CCTV of a car driving down a highway in the middle of the night near the campground where Cleo Smith was last seen at.
The four-year-old disappeared in the early hours of October 16 and was last seen in the tent she was sharing with her family at the Blowholes camping site, near Carnarvon in Western Australia.
Detectives are now looking into footage taken from a home on the North West Coastal Highway, which reportedly shows a sedan driving down the road at about 3am.
Two people on their way to work had earlier told police they saw a car turning south off Blowholes Road at about 3am on the day Cleo vanished.
Cleo Smith in her pink pajamas was sleeping in a tent alongside her mother, stepfather and baby sister Isla in their first camping trip together. In the morning she was gone
The four-year-old disappeared in the early hours of October 16 and was last seen in the tent she was sharing with her family at the Blowholes camping site, near Carnarvon in Western Australia
Police are now working to identify the driver and registration plates to determine whether or not the car seen in the footage is the same as the one in the reports, 7 News reported.
‘We want the person or persons who were in that vehicle to come forward and contact police,’ Detective Superintendent Rod Wilde earlier told reporters.
‘We want to know who they were and what they were doing.
‘The time is not exact but we believe it to have been between 3am and 3.30am.’
Superintendent Wilde said the evidence was ‘credible’ and the witnesses only came forward after learning of the possible abduction of the child, having not thought their sighting of the car was significant at the time.
The witnesses were travelling north on the North West Coastal Highway on their way to work when they spotted the mysterious vehicle leaving the camping ground.
Unfortunately, they were unable to give a description of the car or how many people were inside as it was too dark.
Other witnesses said they heard the sound of screeching tyres leaving the campsite at around the same time.
A $1million reward is now on offer for anyone who has information into the disappearance of missing Cleo with fears she may have been abducted.
She was last seen by her mother Ellie Smith and step-dad Jake Gliddon at 1.30am on Saturday when she asked for a sip of water.
When her parents woke in the morning at about 6.30am, Cleo along with her grey and red sleeping bag had vanished.
The zipper on the side of the tent was also nearly completely open when her family woke in the morning.
Police initially believed Cleo had simply wandered off at the remote campsite, but investigators are now convinced she was snatched in the dead of night.
More to come.
Cleo’s mother Ellie (left) and her partner Jake Gliddon (left) have remained close to the campsite throughout the extensive sea, land and air search for little Cleo
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