Australia, found Cleo Smith, a child kidnapped 18 days ago from the campsite

Cleo Smith was found shortly after midnight on Wednesday. The police broke down the locked door of a house in the small town of Carnarvon, in Australia occidentale, ending the search for the 4-year-old girl, who was disappeared 18 days ago. “What’s your name?” The agents asked her three times before she replied, “My name is Cleo.”

The little girl was kidnapped at night from her family’s tent at a campsite in Quobba Blowholes, a resort town some 950 kilometers north of Perth. Mom reported that Cleo woke up at 1:30 and asked her for a glass of water before going back to sleep. At 6 in the morning, when the mother awakened, Cleo was gone. His sleeping bag was gone.

At first the searches were limited to the area around the campsite, then they were extended throughout the country. “We were looking for a needle in a haystack and we found it, ”explained the deputy police commissioner. “I saw the detectives cry with relief. What we all hoped for has come true ».

Cleo’s mother, Ellie Smith, who had launched several appeals on social media to find her daughter, posted a photo of the little girl on Instagram: “Our family is complete again.”

The police have 36-year-old single man arrested, who was not at home at the time of the raid. There is, at the moment, no other suspect.

A week after the search began, the government of Western Australia offered one reward of 1 million Australian dollars (about 650 thousand euros) for information useful for finding the little girl. More than 200 reports of possible sightings have arrived. Hours of CCTV footage were uploaded to the police website for analysis.

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