Nova Scotia RCMP say cadaver dogs did not locate human remains in the search for missing children Lilly and Jack Sullivan.
In a news release Wednesday, the Mounties said two dog teams searched a total of 40 kilometres in the Lansdowne Station area in late September. The sparsely populated community in Pictou County is about 140 kilometres northeast of Halifax.
Insp. Luke Rettie and his police dog, Narc, as well as Sgt. Dave Whalen and his police dog, Kitt, searched the property the children went missing from, along with a nearby pipeline and intersecting trails, and in the area where a pink blanket was previously found, the release said.
It said those locations had the highest probability of finding the children, but they were not found.
Staff Sgt. Stephen Pike of the RCMP Police Dog Services Training Centre said the dogs are highly trained to detect the scent of human remains, so if the dogs did not alert their handlers, “it suggests the dogs were never in the presence of human remains odour.”
“However, this doesn’t definitively rule out the presence of remains in the areas that were searched,” said Pike.
“It means either the odour is there and couldn’t be detected or the odour isn’t there.”
The children’s disappearance in early May previously sparked an extensive grid search that spanned 8.5 square kilometres of mostly dense woods and involved about 160 ground search and rescue volunteers, service dogs, drones and helicopters.
RCMP say the Northeast Nova major crime unit continues to follow up on information that has been gleaned from the more than 860 tips, 8,060 video files that have been reviewed and forensic testing.
“There are multiple aspects of this investigation ongoing simultaneously,” said Staff Sgt. Rob McCamon, officer in charge of major crime and behavioural sciences.
“Each piece of information, including the results from the search teams, helps inform our next steps. With support from agencies across Canada, the investigative team is working to validate or eliminate leads and follow the evidence wherever it takes us.
He added that RCMP are still “considering all possibilities.”
“We’ll keep going until we determine, with certainty, the circumstances of the children’s disappearance and they’re found,” said McCamon.
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