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3 year old boy missing for 3 days in outback found alive.

According to the reports he was also all muddy, his legs were all scraped up, and he was covered in ant-bites. They also indicate that he ate a lot more than a banana when he was rescued; according to the ambulance tech "all he wanted to do was eat", once he was finally able to stay awake. So if he had actually been kept somewhere by someone over the last three days, he very certainly was not comfortable; on the contrary, this person must've been abusive, made him to sleep exposed on the ground, and not fed him during that time.

He is also, in the video that shows him sitting in the creek trying to drink the muddy water, very clearly not wearing what one would typically call "pajamas". At the very least, he is wearing some kind of hooded sweater.

All very nice. Where does your “minutes from death” theory fit?
 
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All very nice. Where does your “moments from death” theory fit?

I said that might well be the case, not that it was necessarily so.

But the point is, his physical condition is entirely consistent with having spent three days lost in the bush by himself. Enough so that even if some person had kidnapped and held him, they must have held him in conditions identical to what he would've encountered had he been by himself in the bush that whole time.
 
I said that might well be the case, not that it was necessarily so.

But the point is, his physical condition is entirely consistent with having spent three days lost in the bush by himself. Enough so that even if some person had kidnapped and held him, they must have held him in conditions identical to what he would've encountered had he been by himself in the bush that whole time.

A relevant question. Have you had direct experience in caring for a three year old?
 
A relevant question. Have you had direct experience in caring for a three year old?

I don't really understand where you are going with this. Clearly nobody thinks that it is good for a 3-year old to be wandering around outside for three days without adult supervision, but it hardly means it is a death sentence.

Look, here's a recent example of a 3-year old who wandered around for 3 days in Ontario. It looks to me like the temperature was even colder than in Australia. And guess where they found him? 1km from home after a huge search and rescue mission.

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1880280131857
 
Here's a 3-year old boy who was found alive in North Carolina after 3 days in January of 2019. He was about a quarter mile away from where he was last seen.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/missing-year-north-carolina-boy-found-alive/story?id=60612873

As I said before, I’m happy to be proven wrong here. But I remain suspicious. I have had a lot of experience with 3 year olds and if there is no further investigation, fair enough. But I’ll bet there is more to this. The sighting of the ute and the missing CCTV footage are more than curious.

But happy to be proven wrong. I just don’t believe I have been yet.
 
https://www.news.com.au/national/ns...s/news-story/ffaa8ac5dd3992c503d776c164e3bbed

There are a number of things not making sense here. I find it difficult that a three year old child would survive that long without human intervention. There is no evidence of how he got out of the house and ended up where he did.

Also police in the article said they had swept the whole area he was found in. It was only 1km from the farmhouse. Were I the father I would have repeatedly searched the areas around the house. Surely he would have been found if he had been in that area the whole three days.

A “family friend” quoted in that article spoke of a mystery car seen the day he disappeared. The same person told reporters that CCTV footage of the time the child disappeared was missing.

Those two things might be red herrings, but there is more to this story than “child walks out, gets lost, found again”. There has to be others involved in my view.

That seems to be trying to find an issue where there is no evidence of anything strange or untold. It is obviously a rare occurrence but not unheard of. For instance one quick Google search threw out this very similar story: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-37442863
 
That seems to be trying to find an issue where there is no evidence of anything strange or untold. It is obviously a rare occurrence but not unheard of. For instance one quick Google search threw out this very similar story: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-37442863

Yeah. Everyone was absolutely convinced that a dingo did not take the baby.

Let’s wait until more investigation happens.
 
As I said before, I’m happy to be proven wrong here. But I remain suspicious. I have had a lot of experience with 3 year olds and if there is no further investigation, fair enough. But I’ll bet there is more to this. The sighting of the ute and the missing CCTV footage are more than curious.

I don't know what the relevance is with your experience with 3 year olds.

Could you explain more?

But happy to be proven wrong. I just don’t believe I have been yet.

If you mean that the boy may have been abducted, then it is possible and yes, maybe we will find out more from the police investigation. I completely agree that the circumstances should be looked into.

That said, it doesn't cross into the realm of disbelief for me to think that a three year old could have wandered off and be found three days later. I have posted a couple of examples of very similar circumstances happening in Canada and America.
 
I don't really understand where you are going with this. Clearly nobody thinks that it is good for a 3-year old to be wandering around outside for three days without adult supervision, but it hardly means it is a death sentence.

Look, here's a recent example of a 3-year old who wandered around for 3 days in Ontario. It looks to me like the temperature was even colder than in Australia. And guess where they found him? 1km from home after a huge search and rescue mission.

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1880280131857

That's the case that immediately came to my mind when I saw this thread. I tried a bit of Googling but could not find any followup but in this case it is not likely that an adult was involved (given the location in particular) and there was no further reporting to suggest that there had been.
 
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Let’s wait until more investigation happens.

Something I would have posted in reply to your initial OP but I felt it would be rude. Real life isn't TV mysteries: sometimes things that sound like they might have an interesting story behind them really don't.
 
We are just out of winter in Australia. This is high country. I can’t find exact overnight temperatures, but nearby places got down to 5C. He was in pyjamas.

Want to think through that post again?

Ever heard of a little girl called Rainn Peterson?

• Two years old
• Disappeared when she wandered away from her grandparent's home in rural Ohio in October 2016
• Similar temperatures to what you are saying here - overnight lows down to 6°C
• Wearing only a T-shirt and a diaper
• Found alive two days later a mile from her home

This stuff happens
 
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Why would there be more investigation?


Well, that missing security video alone raises some questions. And the police have apparently seized a truck. It sounds like there are unresolved suspicions.
His family were instantly concerned, given AJ had never wandered away from the home before.

His mum Kelly believed her son had been “taken”, while his godfather Alan Hashem recalled seeing an unknown vehicle near the property before he went missing.
....
Mr Hashem, who lives next door, was also convinced someone else was responsible for AJ’s disappearance.

“A suspicious vehicle was spotted outside on the farm’s private road … right before AJ went missing,” he said.
.....
It was revealed on Monday that a ute had been seized by police from a property at Bulga, 78 kilometres northeast of where AJ was last seen.
....
An abandoned derelict shack about one kilometre from AJ’s home was also declared an active crime scene.
....
Mr Hashem said footage from when AJ went missing had been mysteriously deleted from CCTV cameras installed on his property.

“We installed it so high you can’t tamper with it and we had two mechanisms of storage, cloud storage and physical storage, and there’s no data in that timeslot,” he told Today.
https://www.news.com.au/national/ns...k/news-story/b0b7b5ebb30cc3d2504d55ed592fc67c

Sure, kids have wandered away before and been found. But it sounds like it's a little early to close the case.
 
Ever heard of a little girl called Rainn Peterson?
.....


Interestingly, there are unresolved questions in that case, too.
No one will ever know what really happened that weekend, said former Trumbull County Sheriff Thomas Altiere.

“I always believed there was foul play, but we never could prove anything,” he said.

And the Petersons concur. The couple has their suspicions, but there was never enough evidence to pursue a case, they said.

Richard Peterson said little clues make him believe she wasn’t outside the whole time, such as her diaper was only wet, but not dirty. And, there are coyotes in the area, often close enough to the house to hear, Richard said.
https://www.vindy.com/news/local-news/2020/10/5-years-later-rainn-peterson-thrives/
 
A relevant question. Have you had direct experience in caring for a three year old?

Likely not enough to satisfy you. But I don't actually see the relevance. I know enough about human physiology to know that a 3-year-old who wanders around for three days isn't going to die just because it got cold at night and no adult made eye contact with them, and I'm even more confident about that in this case now that it's apparent he was better-clothed than originally stated.

It's not impossible there was something criminal involved in all this, certainly. The truck might be suspicious. The "missing CCTV footage" certainly sounds like it could be suspicious.

But the simple fact that the child was found alive after 72 hours, even if it got cold at night, just isn't suspicious at all given his physical state, injuries, and level of hunger when he was found. Those things are positively suggestive of him having indeed been without adult care for those three days. As I said, in my opinion if some adult had "held" him during that time they must have held him in the woods, made him walk by himself and sleep on the ground, and refused to feed or care for him; i.e., the same things he would've experienced if there were no adults around at all.
 
Well, that missing security video alone raises some questions. And the police have apparently seized a truck. It sounds like there are unresolved suspicions.

https://www.news.com.au/national/ns...k/news-story/b0b7b5ebb30cc3d2504d55ed592fc67c

Sure, kids have wandered away before and been found. But it sounds like it's a little early to close the case.

I'm not surprised to find the boy was autistic. When I saw the video I thought his behavior looked like autism.
 
Most likely scenario is the story is true as written. Boy got lost and survived.
 

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