Smiling and waving while clutching an orange ice pop, this is the extraordinary moment Australia’s ‘Maddie McCann’ Cleo Smith arrived in hospital ‘safe and well’ 18 days after being snatched in her sleeping bag while on a family camping trip on the country’s Coral Coast by a childless suspect caught after he was spotting buying nappies in Woolworths.
Yesterday, police smashed their way into a locked suburban house in Carnarvon, which lies around 47 miles away from where Cleo went missing after receiving ‘really important information about a car’, and officers were reduced to tears after they found the little girl by herself in one of the rooms at around 1am.
One of the officers picked her up into his arms and asked her ‘what’s your name?’ and she said: ‘My name is Cleo’ after being asked the question three times, police have revealed.
They have also released extraordinary bodycam footage of the moment she was rescued and smiles as a detective called Cameron then tells her: ‘Cleo we’re going to take you to see your mummy and daddy’ as a colleague carries her away from the house where she has been held captive for almost three weeks.
At around the same time a 36-year-old man from Carnarvon was arrested at a nearby property, which is just a seven minutes drive away from the girl’s family home, and was taken into custody for questioning. He was filmed with a bandaged head after apparently being beaten by a fellow prisoner who learned what he’d been arrested for.
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Neighbours described how they became suspicious of the ‘loner’ suspect, who has no connection to Cleo or her family, after seeing him shopping for diapers in a Woolworths store despite not having children. One resident told Seven News: ‘The other day, I think it was Monday, we saw him in Woolworths buying nappies but we didn’t click on who it was or what he was buying them for until now.’
Cleo is already back home at Carnarvon in Western Australia after a rollercoaster day that saw officers discover her in a locked house in the town after a tip-off and reunited her with her ecstatic parents on the way to get her checked in hospital.
Following the rescue operation, Cleo’s mother Ellie Smith broke her silence by posting picture of her daughter to her Instagram page alongside the message: ‘Our family is whole again.’
Cleo, who was dubbed ‘Australia’s Madeleine McCann’, disappeared with her sleeping bag from her family’s tent at the Blowholes campsite in Macleod, near Carnarvon, which lies north of Perth, at around 1.30am on October 16.
The child’s disappearance triggered an extensive air, sea and ground search throughout the region and saw police officers interview more than 110 people who were at the campsite on the night Cleo arrived with her family.
Read more: Daily Mail
