Cleo Smith's mum speaks out again after police rule out new theory
Images: Instagram
Ellie Smith issued another desperate plea for her daughter as detectives investigating the four-year-old’s disappearance ruled out a major line of inquiry, saying there is “no evidence” to suggest Cleo or her family were victims of stalking before she vanished.
In a series of photos of Cleo shared to her Instagram story, Ms Smith wrote: “We all need her home.”
“Where are you baby,” she captioned another image.
Over the weekend, forensic police combed through the family’s home in South Carnarvon, and reports emerged they were looking for evidence of stalking prior to Cleo’s probable abduction eight days ago.
However, the detective leading the investigation has revealed there were no leads on a stalker and the search of the family’s home was “standard practice”.
“We do that as part of a thorough investigation, but that’s not indicating they’ve been stalked, nothing like,” Detective Superintendent Rod Wilde told The West Australian.
“In actual fact, if she has been taken, its more likely to have been a random event. There is no indication and no evidence that anyone was being stalked.”
A police source added that the forensic examination would help implicate or eliminate Cleo’s parents as suspects.
Police have repeatedly stated that while they are not ruling out any possibilities, they are not treating Cleo’s parents as suspects in this case.
After a week of searching the rugged terrain for Cleo, police confirmed it was likely she had been abducted from the tent.
Police received a tip-off about a car seen leaving the camping grounds shortly after she was snatched from the family’s tent.
“We’re hoping that the persons that were in the vehicle come forward and make themselves known to police so we can speak to them,” Superintendent Wilde said. “We believe it’s a passenger vehicle….at that time of night, it’s very dark out there. We want to speak to the driver and persons – if there was more than one person in that vehicle – to establish exactly what was going on and what they were doing.”