‘Everybody is still holding out hope, but you can see it starting to wear’

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On the fourth day of searching for two Pictou County children, Amy Hansen could see the toll on her fellow volunteers.

“Everybody is still holding out hope, but you can see it starting to wear,” said Hansen, a member of the Colchester County Ground Search and Rescue Association, on Monday.

“Everybody you see here in an orange shirt, they’re all volunteers. They left their own children, their families to come here.”

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As search manager, she’s tasked with organizing the massive effort to find four-year-old Jack Sullivan and his sister Lily, six, who were reported missing from their home on the Gairloch Road in Pictou County on Friday at 10 a.m.

Daniel Robert Martell told The Chronicle Herald that he and the children’s mother, Malehya Brooks-Murray, last heard Jack and Lily on Friday morning as they lay in bed with their baby. Pictou County District RCMP are asking the public for help finding Lily Sullivan, age 6, left, and Jack Sullivan, age 4. The two children were last seen Friday morning, May 2, in Lansdowne Station, Pictou County. Photo by RCMP
“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 father to Jack and Lily. He’s been Brooks-Murray’s partner for three years. He said the children have undiagnosed autism and it is not like them to wander far.

Martell said he immediately jumped in the car and searched neighbouring roads, looking in culverts. By the time he returned home, the RCMP were on the scene after being called by the children’s mother.

So began the massive search effort that has seen hundreds of volunteers called in from the province’s 23 search and rescue associations, along with various provincial, municipal, federal and civilian agencies.

Each day there’s been upwards of 140 ground search volunteers combing the forest along with police K-9 units, while helicopters and drones work from the air. The search has continued through the nights as the chances of a child’s survival in the forest has decreased.

“It’s believed they wandered away from a home on the Gairloch Road,” reads a statement from the RCMP.

“There continues to be no evidence to suggest that the children were abducted.”

The plight of the children has ignited intense online interest and demands from community members that they be allowed to come join the search. Hansen said Monday that she understands people’s desire to help but that searchers have all the resources they need and all the volunteers they can co-ordinate safely.

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“More people in the area would make it harder for us to do our jobs,” said Hansen.

“We identify not just things that are relevant but also things that aren’t. If you have more people coming in, they can contaminate the search area, creating more things that we would have to eliminate.”

The effort is guided by Lost Person Behaviour – a search and rescue guide based on over 100,000 cases around the world.

“A lost hiker will typically stay to trails or follow linear topographical features, someone with dementia will walk straight,” said Hansen.

“What would a child of 4-6 do? Most, when they’re cold and tired, will find somewhere to curl up and sleep. In a hole, under a deadfall, in an abandoned building.”

Working in grids and linked in real time to the command centre via GPS, the search teams have been covering every inch of ground out from Jack and Lily’s home for kilometres.

Hansen acknowledged that footprints had been found and that those are being followed.

Another K-9 unit was working the immediate vicinity of the home Monday morning.

Stood in his yard, Martell said he’d been avoiding social media where, among the outpourings of grief, various theories have been circulating.

The children’s mother left the area on Saturday to be with family.

“It’s hard,” said Martell.

“I’d ask that anyone with any information pass it along to the RCMP.”

It’s been a hard week in Pictou County. Hansen’s was one of the search teams looking for a youth kayaker who capsized on Eden Lake on Thursday. The young person’s body was recovered by RCMP divers on Friday.

On Monday morning, Hansen was looking at bringing in a critical incident stress management team.