one month since Sullivan children disappearance in rural Pictou County

CITYnews halifax / By Natasha O’Neill

A month ago, two young children were reported missing in a rural Pictou County community, and since then the search has grown and so have questions surrounding the case.

Lilly, 6, and Jack, 4, Sullivan were reported missing by their stepdad and mother on May 2, around 10:00 a.m. RCMP immediately launched a missing persons investigation and responded to the area, they told CityNews in an email. What continued were days of around-the-clock searching with little evidence on where the children had gone.

The case has caught the attention of people across the country, especially because of how young the pair are and the few answers the public has been given over the last month.

May 2-4: Initial search efforts

The first day, the RCMP put out a press release saying it is believed the two children wandered away from their home on Gairloch Road in Lansdowne Station, a community east of Truro. That morning, a vulnerable missing persons alert was issued in Pictou County with the description of the two children.

At the time of their disappearance, Lilly is said to be wearing a pink sweater, pink pants and pink boots. Jack was last seen wearing blue dinosaur boots. It is also possible that Lilly was carrying a backpack, and Jack is likely to have taken off the pull-up diaper he was wearing at the time.

Over the weekend, ground search and rescue volunteers searched several kilometres in the area where the pair were last seen. Since the beginning, the RCMP have asked people not to come help, and leave the searching to the experts like the Nova Scotia Guard, police dogs and helicopters from the Department of Natural Resources.

May 5: Speculation of abduction

On the fourth day of the search, the children’s stepfather, Daniel Martell told The Canadian Press he worried that Lilly and Jack were abducted.

“I have no idea why (anyone) would want to take them, but they’re easy to take. If they would have wandered to the road, they would get in any car as long as you offered them food or water, or even candy or anything like that — or even to see mom and dad, they would immediately get in,” Martell said on May 5.

From the beginning, police have been adamant that there is no evidence to suggest the pair were abducted.

Jim Hoskins, a retired Halifax Regional Police officer, lent his expertise in policing on the case, saying that the early stages of an investigation are very important.

In his long career, Hoskins has been involved in several missing person cases, both as an officer and as a searcher. He told CityNews in an interview that in some police departments, there is a policy for whether an Amber Alert should be issued.

For the RCMP, four things need to be met for the agency to issue an Amber Alert:

• Police have confirmed that an abduction has taken place
• The victim is under age 18 or of proven physical or mental disability
• There’s reason to believe the victim is in danger of serious physical injury
• There’s information available that, if broadcasted to the public, could assist in the safe recovery of the victim

“It’s very important when you decide that it’s not an abduction because what you’re saying is if there’s no abduction, then there’s no reason for an alert,” Hoskins said.

He did say some departments would take another approach and say they cannot conclude it wasn’t an abduction because the evidence cannot rule it out.

“When you call it early, the RCMP must be quite sure that there’s no abduction,” Hoskins said.

At some point over this weekend, it was widely reported that the children’s mother, Malehya Brooks-Murray, was no longer in the area. According to Martell, she left to be with family in another part of the province with their 16-month-old baby.

A photo of Malehya Brooks-Murray and Daniel Martell. (Facebook)

May 6: No evidence

Search director Amy Hansen said between 100 and 140 people were working on the search during the day, and 60 to 75 were expected to work through the night. An RCMP communications person said drones, police dogs and specially trained crews would handle the night shift.

The search area expanded to four kilometres wide and focused on the forest by the children’s home on Gairloch Road. The area has a lot of streams, rivers and elevation changes. Martell told CityNews in an interview that the RCMP tried to show him a water bottle, blanket and two sweaters, but they were not the children’s.

This was the same day Martell voluntarily attended a four-hour interview with major crime investigators and submitted his smartphone to police for examination.

The Canadian Press got hold of the children’s maternal grandmother, who said the family is holding hope for “our babies to come home.”

Cyndy Murray added in that brief phone call that police have advised them against speaking with the public.

May 7: RCMP scale back search

In the first press conference of the case, officials said that after a multi-agency response and looking through the dense woods, the likelihood that the two young children are alive was low.

“Probability of survival is taken into consideration,” Curtis MacKinnon, RCMP Staff Sgt., said of the decision.

Police said if they believed the pair were alive in the forest, they would still be searching. Instead, they decided to scale back the search and limit the number of people looking.

Even though they have said the searches have been “meticulous,” part of the scaled-back approach is to revisit some parts.

“We want to circle back to increase the probability that all clues have been found,” MacKinnon said. “We’re not packing up and we’re not giving up. Our investigation is broad and it won’t end until we know where Lilly and Jack are and can bring them home.”

The head of the Colchester County Ground Search and Rescue said that the people searching are exhausted after climbing through brush left over from Hurricane Fiona and long days with no indicators as to where to search next.

RCMP also revealed in the press conference that they found a possible small boot imprint in the woods, which prompted a full-scale grid search in the surrounding area, but turned up nothing.

May 8-13: Searching in bodies of water, interviews done

By this time, 5.5 square kilometres of heavily wooded terrain had been searched.

RCMP said over the week since the press conference, the underwater recovery team scoured bodies of water around Lansdowne Station as part of a two-day operation, but didn’t produce any evidence.

Police said they are following up on more than 180 tips and are doing formal interviews with 35 community members and those closest to the children.

In a follow-up statement to The Canadian Press, the RCMP confirmed that family members were among those being interviewed for the investigation, adding that questioning relatives was standard practice for a missing children case.

Retired HRP officer, Hoskins, said that it is common that officials interview a lot of people in missing persons cases.

“Those communities are small, they know everybody…There’s a lot of traffic between those communities,” he said. “They’ll interview any and everybody that might be a possible witness.”

May 17-18: More searching

About 100 ground search and rescue volunteers returned to the woods to take a closer look at specific areas around the road where the family’s home is located over the May long weekend.

Searchers have said the slow, hard work of scanning the forest floor was made more difficult by thick layers of toppled, interlocking trees left strewn across the region.

As the search ended on May 18, police said the results would be carefully reviewed by investigators and search managers.

Meanwhile, the children’s disappearance has become a hot topic on social media, where speculation about their fate has become fodder for podcasts and commentaries.

The recent search area focus is highlighted in this Google Satellite image.

May 28: Timeline of events released

Investigators said they have confirmed the last time two missing children were seen in public.

RCMP said they have a timeline of when they were last seen by other people outside of their immediate family.

“Based on the details we’ve gathered so far, we’ve confirmed that Lilly and Jack were observed in public with family members on the afternoon of May 1,” says Cpl. Sandy Matharu, Northeast Nova RCMP Major Crime Unit.

Police are asking people to send them dashcam footage or videos along Gairloch Road between 12:00 p.m. on April 28 and 12:00 p.m. on May 2 — the week leading up to the children going missing.

The Mounties add in the press release that they are “committed to exploring all possibilities” surrounding the children’s disappearance. According to them, more than 50 people have been formally interviewed, with more expected to take place in the coming days.

May 30-June 2: Searching but no evidence found

A weekend search took place just days before the one-month anniversary of the children’s reported disappearance.

Search and rescue teams have been focusing on a specific area around Gairloch Road and the nearby pipeline trail where a boot print had previously been found.

A crew of about 75 resumed the search in rainy conditions on May 31, alongside three drones and seven drone operators. Heavy winds and an incoming geomagnetic storm kept drones on the ground on Sunday, the search coordinator said.

There will be a discussion with the RCMP after Sunday’s search efforts conclude to decide if a third search is needed.

The search manager said the work of the search-and-rescue teams, many of whom are volunteers, has been gruelling.

“What the people that are here are putting themselves through, the stress levels and the exhaustion … being in the woods pushing through all this brush so close together so they can see everything for hours on end … the effort that’s going in is unreal,” she said.

With files from The Canadian Press.