A day after New Scotland RCMP announced that it was reducing the search for two missing children, the force command center in a rural community of Pictou County has been packed and the land search equipment has abandoned the area.
Lily Sullivan, 6, and Jack Sullivan, 4, have been missing since May 2, when the police received a 911 call informing that they had moved away from their home in Gairloch Road at the Lansdowne station, approximately 25 kilometers southwest of New Glasgow.
Police announced on Wednesday that after six days of traveling the very wooded areas that surround the house, there were no signs of children and they are not likely to be alive.
Staff sergeant. Curtis Mackinnon said at a press conference that the active search was “reducing”, but the investigation of missing people would continue.
“Then, instead of having the great presence here, the large number of search engines on the scene every day, searches will be based on the information that enters,” said Mackinnon.
“We are not packing and we are not giving ourselves. Our research is wide and will not end until we know where Lily and Jack are and can take them home.”
On Thursday afternoon, everything that remained in the RCMP Command Center was a piece of yellow jirones yellow tape, some portable bathrooms and pneumatic tracks.
In a statement on Thursday, CPL. Carlie McCann said that force had no more information to share about the case.
Although RCMP has said that some areas that were already registered would be reviewed as part of the backward efforts, they would not say on Thursday how many search engines or researchers remain involved in the case. You could see a helicopter flying over the area during the day.
Daniel Martell, a stepfather of Lily and Jack Sullivan, said he has asked the police to give him a polygraph test. He says they have told him that he will happen in the next few days.
Mackinnon said investigators have not ruled out that the case is suspicious and pointed out that the main CMP crime unit has been involved in the investigation since May 3.
He said that all the archives of missing people “are treated as suspects until our research leads us to determine the opposite.”
Six days after two children were reported as disappeared from a rural house in Pictou County of Nueva Scotia, RCMP says they are reducing the search and have not ruled out that the case is suspicious. Blair Rhodes of CBC reports.
Daniel Martell, the children’s stepfather, said he believes that Lily and Jack slid down her back door while he and the children’s mother were in her room with her one -year -old daughter.
In the days after the disappearance, Martell has remained at home, receiving daily updates from search and rescue officials and talking to journalists who descended on the county of approximately 43,000 people.
He has repeatedly said that he believes that the children were kidnapped, but RCMP has said that there is no evidence of that.
On Thursday, Martell said they told him that a team would be looking for in a nearby lake.
Martell said he spoke with the investigators of the main crime unit in the detachment of Stellarton RCMP earlier this week, breaking down exactly what happened in the morning of the disappearance, “minute by minute.”
He said that statements have also been taken from their family members, who have been at home during the past week to support him.
“I am physically exhausted, mental and emotional at this point,” Martell said in an interview outside his home.
On Wednesday, the RCMP announced that they were reducing the search for two missing children in Pictou County. Many of the land search and rescue teams involved in the effort have now returned home. Kyle Moore from CBC tells us more.
Martell said he voluntarily delivered his phone to the police. He said that researchers have also registered the house and “everything I have.”
“They looked for every rock, every root. Everything,” Martell said. “I have been giving them every detail, from the extract states of my bank account to all the information that came out of my Google maps.”
Martell said he has also asked the police to give him a polygraph test, which will happen in the next few days.
“I just want to clarify it for everyone, not only for online people who make crazy accusations and everything else,” he said. “I asked that from the beginning, and there are not many places to do it in Canada, so they are flying to someone.”
Polygraphs are sometimes used in police investigations, but the results are not admissible in Canadian courts because they are not reliable. RCMP refused to say if a polygraph would be administered.
“To guarantee the integrity of the investigation, no more details will be disclosed at this time,” wrote spokesman Allison Gerrard in an email.
The mother of the children, Malkya Brooks-Murray, left the area with her son to be with her family in another part of the province.
The children’s grandmother, Cyndy Murray, spoke with the Canadian press earlier this week in a brief telephone interview, adding that the police have advised the family that did not talk to the public.
“We just wait and pray for the best, that’s all, so that our babies return home.”
Meanwhile, an improvised memorial was taking shape in the nearby Stellarton RCMP detachment. You could see a large white teddy bear and a bouquet of flowers resting in a position off the building on Thursday afternoon.
