Major Lead After 17 Days: Truck Driver’s Haunting Sighting of Crying Boy in Pajamas in Rust-Colored SUV Ignites Frenzy in Gus Lamont Disappearance – Detectives Plead for Dashcam Footage from September 22

Seventeen days of silence shattered by a trucker’s trembling voice: a crying boy, no older than four, huddled in the passenger seat of a rust-colored SUV, pajamas askew and face streaked with tears. The sighting, reported by long-haul driver Barry Kline on the Barrier Highway roughly 97 kilometers north of the search epicenter, has hurled the vanishing of August “Gus” Lamont into a vortex of renewed desperation and dread. Kline’s call to the SAPOL hotline late on October 13 – timestamped just after midnight – described the child as “sobbing his little heart out,” visible in the glow of dashboard lights as the SUV idled at a remote lay-by near Cockburn. “Looked like he was in his jammies, all rumpled – not right for a kid that time of night,” Kline told detectives in a follow-up interview aired on ABC Radio this morning. Now, as forensic teams dissect every rust-hued vehicle registered in the Mid-North, authorities issue an urgent clarion: if you traversed that highway on September 22 – five days before Gus vanished – your dashcam could be the Rosetta Stone. “This is seismic,” Superintendent Mark Syrus declared at a roadside briefing, wind whipping red dust across his Akubra. “A boy matching Gus’s description, 97 kays out, crying? We’re tracing every SUV, every plate. Drivers from that night – upload your footage now. It could crack this wide open.”

Gus Lamont’s erasure from the sun-baked mound of dirt at his grandparents’ Oak Park Station homestead remains a scar on Australia’s soul. On September 27, 2025, at approximately 5 p.m., the four-year-old – blonde curls tousled, eyes wide with the wonder of a “treasure digger” – was last glimpsed wielding a plastic shovel outside the weathered bungalow, 40 kilometers south of Yunta. Clad in a blue Minions long-sleeved shirt, grey pants, small boots, and a broad-brimmed hat, Gus embodied the shy adventurer his family cherished. His grandmother turned away for 30 minutes to stoke the evening fire; at 5:30 p.m., the shovel lay solitary, and the outback – that vast, velvet trap of saltbush, spinifex, and shadow – had claimed him. No scream pierced the cicada hum, no scuff marked the ochre soil. Just absence, profound and profane.

The response was titanic, a testament to outback grit and national grief. Over 200 souls – SAPOL officers, SES volunteers, ADF trackers, Indigenous rangers whispering to the land’s lore, and divers plumbing silt-choked dams – engulfed 470 square kilometers of lethal labyrinth. PolAir helicopters cleaved the cobalt sky, infrared drones ghosted the nights, ATVs snarled through wombat warrens and gold-rush relics: mine shafts yawning unseen, creek beds cloaked in deceptive shallows. Cadaver dogs quartered the thorns, ground-penetrating radar – honed on cases like Julian Story’s grim recovery – hummed for hollows. A lone boot print, size 10 and tantalizingly proximate to Gus’s, surfaced 500 meters from the homestead on day three, birthing a 48-hour maelstrom. A second, 3.5 kilometers west near a dam, flickered hope on day 10 – only for forensics to dismiss both as unrelated echoes of prior passage. By October 4, day eight, Assistant Commissioner Ian Parrott invoked the inexorable math: a toddler’s survival in 40°C scorches and sub-zero chills, sans sustenance, plummets post-72 hours. “We’ve exhausted every crevice,” he intoned, as the frenzy ebbed to recovery, the Missing Persons Unit assuming the mantle amid whispers of third-party shadows. “A four-year-old doesn’t dissolve into ether,” Superintendent Syrus echoed, his words a dirge for daylight odds.

The digital deluge drowned discourse. #FindGusNow surged with solidarity – vigils in Yunta’s weathered pub and Peterborough’s hall, porch lights ablaze under “Leave a Light on for Gus” – amassing AUD $350,000 for private infrared sweeps and thermal arrays. Yet bile bubbled: Facebook’s AI spawning spectral “blood trails” and hoaxes, Reddit rifts theorizing family complicity or dingo devouring, X threads eviscerating the “keyboard detectives” as “despicable vultures.” Peterborough Mayor Ruth Whittle, voice cracking on Sky News, pleaded: “We’re parents all – this speculation shreds the soul.” Former SES tracker Jason O’Connell, who logged 1,200 kilometers beside Tom Lamont, gut-punched the void: “Zero trace on that spread. He’s not lost – he’s lifted.” A childhood friend, speaking to The Nightly, bared the family’s fracture: “Hurting beyond belief – shattered, but steeling for truth.”

Prior phantoms – a white ute idling by an derelict well six kilometers east, 48 hours post-fade; a “G.L.”-scribed sippy bottle 120 kilometers north at Cockburn; a fresh scent trail 4.8 kilometers northeast by the parched riverbed – had nudged toward abduction, but Kline’s account detonates the dam. September 22, five days pre-vanishing, places the SUV on the Stuart Highway during a routine family errand to Peterborough, per family timelines. Pajamas evoke a hasty snatch post-bedtime; the cry, a four-year-old’s terror. “Rust-colored – like a faded Ford Territory, maybe,” Kline elaborated, sketching the vehicle for sketch artists. SAPOL’s BOLO blankets the airwaves: rust-hued SUVs, 2005-2015 models, scoured via ANPR cams and rego databases. Dashcam portals – the hotline’s new lifeline – flood with uploads, AI algorithms sifting for the telltale glint of a child’s tear-streaked face.

The abduction axis accelerates. AFP profilers, invoking Cleo Smith’s 2021 snatch-and-snatch-back, posit a predator’s playbook: lure, load, leg it along the lonely Barrier. “97 kays in hours? Vehicular vector,” Dr. Elena Torres asserts. “Pajamas scream opportunistic – a drifter spotting vulnerability.” Cross-hairs lock on trucker routes, re-interviews with station hands and highway haulers. Infrared drone redux – the tech that nailed Story – blankets the lay-by, while divers plumb adjacent bores for weighted horrors.

For the Lamonts, this specter is salvation’s thorn. Tom Lamont, shearer sculpted by the soil’s savagery, confronted cameras at Yunta’s dawn patrol, clutching Gus’s kangaroo plush like a shield. “That cry – if it’s my tacker in jammies, some mongrel’s got him hauling tears across the blacktop,” Tom rasped, fists clenched white-knuckled. “Gus named his PJs ‘Dino Armor’ – said they’d make him brave. We’re chasing ghosts, but we’ll drag ’em to light.” Sarah, gaunt but granite, evoked the boy’s echo: “He’d sing Minions tunes to the roos – now? We’re screaming for him.” Their elders, 7 and 9, etch “rescue maps” in sand, walkie-talkies crackling phantom replies. A cousin, to The Advertiser: “This lead? It’s lightning – hope’s blaze, fear’s forge.”

The nation navigates the knife-edge. X erupts in #DashcamsForGus, @SkyNewsAust imploring: “Highway warriors – that footage from the 22nd? It’s gold.” Hugh Jackman, outback heir, retorts: “From whispers to roars – haul that boy home.” O’Connell reboots: “If SUV says snatched, we shadow it.” Dr. Mia Chen, Flinders survival sage, tempers: “Seventeen days… but echoes like Cleo kindle.” Tips torrent the lines (131 444): a rust SUV veering east at dusk, a muffled wail from a servo.

As twilight tints the Flinders crimson, SAPOL storms the highway – trackers trailing tire ghosts, divers delving the dark. Gus Lamont – wee warrior with a giggle that gilded the gums – isn’t adrift; he’s pursued, his cry a clarion across 97 kilometers of asphalt ache. Pajamas in the passenger glow, tears tracing the miles. Yunta’s lanterns flare, the bush breathes betrayal. One dashcam’s dawn could dawn deliverance. Australia implores: upload. Because in this saga of dust and despair, a trucker’s memory might mend a mother’s midnight.