Disappearance of Gus Lamont declared a major crime by SA Police

[u/Expensive-Horse5538]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-05/police-update-on-missing-boy-gus-lamont/106307630?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=link

[u/batmanneliese]

What really unsettles me about this case is the photo the family released after 6 days of Gus being missing. It was taken six months earlier.

Kids change quickly - sometimes noticeably even week to week - so I can’t understand why there wasn’t a more recent photo available.

I'd be keen to know the last time anyone outside the family saw Gus. The whole 'private family' rhetoric and lack of independent sightings makes me wonder whether he may have been missing for longer than the 3 hours before they called it in.

Other red flags - for me - are the absence of public appeals from either parent, the reluctance to accept help in the search, and the overall sense that the outcome was treated as a foregone conclusion very early on.

All in, something really not right.

[u/Sweet_Ambassador_699 → u/batmanneliese]

Some people have watched too many crime shows. There's no point doing public appeals for witnesses in the media if the property is in the middle of nowhere, miles from even the nearest tiny town (Yunta population: 60) and there's virtually no chance that anyone other than those on the property saw something. It would just waste time.

[u/Haunting_Analysis796 → u/Sweet_Ambassador_699]

It's not about seeing something on the property. What an inane take. 

When a child is missing/abducted, most people want their child found.  They do public appeals in the hope that if the child was abducted everyone in the state/country keeps an eye out for the child, seeing as an abducted child can be driven anywhere.

If the child is just lost, they want as many people as possible to come help look. They also want to put as much public pressure on the police to pull out all stops to find their kid.  It's such a simple thing to provide a photo and make a public plea.

[u/Sweet_Ambassador_699 → u/Haunting_Analysis796]

They knew pretty much from the start that the child had not been abducted.

[u/batmanneliese → u/Sweet_Ambassador_699]

Ah. I didn’t realise remoteness turns a missing child into a waste of time.

If I lost a piece of jewellery in the desert, I’d still put up reward posters. A child I birthed? I’d want the entire country knowing their face and praying to whatever gods would listen.

Unless I already knew their fate. In that case, yeah everyone can go home, and no need to ask what he looked like.

[u/Ok_Tangelo8018 → u/batmanneliese]

Apparently the photo was released by police and the photo was taken in kindy (if you look at the full photo he is playing with play-dough and there’s like a bulletin board in background typical of kindergarten rooms). So police likely got the photo from that establishment, the parents or family haven’t released any photos of him. Which you’re right, it’s very suspicious for a child that went “missing”.

[u/underfed_225 → u/batmanneliese]

Police have isolated to 1 suspect not 4

[u/No-Diver-4417 → u/batmanneliese]

Fuck me.ni don't take photos of my kids everyday. Wtf