RCMP ‘officers have so far identified 35 people for formal interviews as part of the investigation, including community members and those closest to the children.’

Mounties have fielded more than 180 tips from the public about two young children reported missing 11 days ago from their home in rural northeastern Nova Scotia.

The disappearance of Lilly and Jack Sullivan from their trailer home in Lansdowne Station, Pictou County, that they shared with their mother, stepfather and the couple’s baby prompted a massive search in the wooded area around Gairloch Road.

“We’re exploring all avenues in this missing persons investigation,” Staff Sgt. Curtis MacKinnon said Tuesday in a news release. “We have officers from multiple disciplines dedicated to finding Lilly and Jack, including highly trained RCMP major crime and forensic investigators.”

Of the tips from the public, “officers have so far identified 35 people for formal interviews as part of the investigation, including community members and those closest to the children,” said the police.

It notes the RCMP’s Underwater Recovery Team scoured bodies of water around Landsdowne Station on May 8 and 9, but “didn’t uncover any evidence.”

Mounties “continue to work day and night on this file,” MacKinnon said. “Like all Nova Scotians, we want answers, and we want to know what happened to these children.”

Mounties first got the call on May 2 at 10 a.m. that Lilly, 6, and Jack, 4, were missing.

“They were believed to have wandered away from their home on Gairloch (Road). A multi-agency search and missing persons investigation began immediately,” said the RCMP news release.

The search, which involved hundreds of trained volunteers, was scaled back to specific areas on May 7. It covered 5.5 square kilometres of heavily wooded, rural terrain.

Daniel Robert Martell, who identifies as the children’s stepfather, told The Chronicle Herald last week that he and the children’s mother, Malehya Brooks-Murray, last heard Jack and Lily on the morning of Friday, May 2, as they lay in bed with their baby.

“The sun was already up and Lily came into the (bedroom),” said Martell.

“She had a pink shirt on. We could hear Jackie in the kitchen. A few minutes later we didn’t hear them so I went out to check. The sliding door was closed. Their boots were gone.”

Martell is not Jack and Lily’s father. He’s been Brooks-Murray’s partner for three years, though after the children disappeared she reportedly left him and the county with their baby and is staying with family.

Martell has said the children have undiagnosed autism and it is not like them to wander far.

Martell said when they noticed the two children were missing May 2, he immediately jumped in the car and searched neighbouring roads, looking in culverts. By the time he returned home, the RCMP were there, having been called by the children’s mother.

Martell said last Wednesday that he had been working with Northeast Nova Major Crime, had provided the RCMP with his cellphone and had agreed to take a lie detector test.

The RCMP have previously said there is no evidence the children were abducted.

On the weekend after they vanished, Brooks-Murray told CTV that Jack and Lilly are not typically the type of children who would go outside on their own.

“I just want to remain hopeful, but there’s always in a mother’s mind, you’re always thinking the worst,” Brooks-Murray said at the time.

Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Lilly and Jack is asked to contact Pictou County District RCMP at 902-485-4333. To remain anonymous, contact Nova Scotia Crime Stoppers, toll-free, at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477), submit a secure web tip at www.crimestoppers.ns.ca, or use the P3 Tips app.

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