The owner of a shack which captured the voice of missing Cleo Smith on its CCTV system has opened up about the ‘panicked’ moments after the little girl vanished.
The four-year-old disappeared from her family’s tent at the Blowholes campsite, near Carnarvon in Western Australia in the early hours of October 16.
In the two weeks since Cleo disappeared, no trace has been found with a $1million reward on offer for anyone who has information into her whereabouts.
Dave Sadecky and his wife, who own the shack, handed over the crucial footage of little Cleo to police which placed her at the campsite on the night before she vanished.
The CCTV motion sensitive camera is installed inside their beach shack which was just 20 metres away from the family tent and takes a wide-angled photo of everyone who enters or leaves it.
Little Cleo Smith has been missing for two weeks, having last been seen at the Blowholes campground near Carnarvon in WA
The camera captures audio and images from inside a painted wooden box with a glass front and would not appear obvious to those passing by.
When Mr Sadecky and his wife learnt of the news surrounding the four-year-old, they immediately jumped on their quad bikes to join the search.
‘I didn’t know the ins and outs of what was going on but everyone was panicked,’ Mr Sadecky told The West Australian.
‘People dropped everything and came to help … they were everywhere on Saturday like ants — it’s not a normal sight.’
The couple ended up scouring the area for ten hours on the day Cleo was last seen.
She had woken up at 1.30am on the Saturday to ask her mother Ellie for a sip of water but when her parents woke again at about 6am, Cleo was gone.
The four-year-old had woken up at 1.30am on the Saturday to ask her mother Ellie for a sip of water but when her parents woke again at about 6am, Cleo was gone
Dave Sadecky who owns a nearby shack at the campsite captured the voice of Cleo on his shack’s CCTV system, and handed it over to police
Detectives found the zip on the tent Cleo was sleeping in had been opened and was too high for the little girl to reach
‘Everyone was emotional, people were clearly stressed and anxious but wanted to help. We’ve never had anything like this happen before. We’re there every other weekend, we’re kicking ourselves we weren’t there that night,’ Mr Sadecky said.
He said the campsite would now be ‘tainted’ from what happened, a local at Blowholes himself.
He added there was a tight-knit community in the area and that often people would leave their doors unlocked.
Meanwhile, a close family friend of Cleo’s mother Ellie Smith and stepdad Jake Gliddon have said detectives are not wanting to give them any ‘false hope’.
‘There’s nothing worse than saying, ”We’re going to find her”, or, ”We think we’ve got the person”, and then they don’t have the person or they don’t find her,’ the friend told the West.
Cleo is seen with her mother Ellie Smith. A $1million reward is on offer to anybody with information into her disappearance
‘Police aren’t going to give you false hope and that’s what we said from day one.’
The family friend had been at the campsite at the time Cleo went missing and helped scour the area in search of the four-year-old.
He said her distraught parents have also had to deal with online trolls who pointed the finger at them in the days following their daughter’s disappearance.
Police have ruled out both Ms Smith and Mr Gliddon as suspects and Daily Mail Australia is not suggesting they had anything to do with her disappearance.
‘I know it’s affecting them. Fingers crossed they aren’t looking at it too much,’ the friend said.
It comes after it was revealed detectives in the 100-strong taskforce had responded to 200 potential sightings of Cleo in the two weeks since she disappeared.
It comes after it was revealed detectives in the 100-strong taskforce had responded to 200 potential sightings of Cleo in the two weeks since she disappeared.
‘Unfortunately all of those have proved unfruitful,’ Detective Superintendent Rob Wilde said.
‘That’s been national as well, other policing jurisdictions have helped us and followed those leads through for us, so we’re very grateful for that.’
While none of the leads have been accurate yet, he is still calling on the public to continue searching for Cleo and reporting any potentially useful information.
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