WA Police seek driver, campers in search for missing 4yo Cleo Smith

Detectives want to speak to a driver and anyone camping near where Cleo Smith went missing. Photo: WA Police
The driver of a car seen near the campsite where a young girl went missing last weekend is being sought by West Australian police, who stress they are a not a suspect in the disappearance.
Detectives want to talk to the driver of the vehicle spotted two hours after missing four-year-old Cleo Smith was last seen in her familyâs tent, as well as anyone who was camping nearby.
Police believe Cleo was taken from the tent at the Blowholes site on WAâs north-west coast in the early hours of last Saturday morning.
Detective Superintendent Rod Wilde on Sunday afternoon said a car was seen turning south off Blowholes Road between 3am and 3.30am that morning.
https://twitter.com/WA_Police/status/1452103048721879040
âWe want the person or persons who were in that vehicle to come forward and contact police,â Mr Wilde said.
âWe want to know who they were and what they were doing.â
Mr Wilde stressed the driver was not a suspect.
Cleo was last seen by her parents about 1.30am last Saturday. Her mother Ellie Smith said she woke at 6am to discover she was missing.
It has been confirmed the zipper on the tent was found open to a height Cleo could not have reached, seemingly ruling out the possibility she wandered off on her own.
Her red and black sleeping bag is also missing.
Mr Wilde said the witnesses who spotted the car were âcredible sourcesâ.
He also called on anyone camping within the vicinity last weekend to call police.
âThereâs still people out there that we want to catch up with and to speak to,â Mr Wilde said.
The WA government on Thursday issued a $1 million reward for information about Cleoâs whereabouts.
Premier Mark McGowan said every resource had been directed into finding Cleo and he urged anyone with information to come forward.
âWe all feel for her and her family and we just want to make sure that we find her as soon as we can, and that every, every effort is made to uncover her location so that the family can find out where she is,â Mr McGowan said on Sunday.
At the same press conference, Commissioner Chris Dawson said police would âpainstakingly go through every vehicle movementâ and every piece of forensic evidence.
âThis is a large-scale investigation, but it is in a remote locality,â Mr Dawson said.
âSo in one sense, weâve got an opportunity here to put a very large footprint around whoever was in the area at the time, itâs that sort of level of investigation and effort that we are capturing now.â
He said there was no information to suggest Cleo was not still in Western Australia.
-AAP








