LANSDOWNE STATION — As a search continued for a fourth day for two young children believed to have wandered from their rural home in northeastern Nova Scotia, the children's stepfather said Monday he is worried they may have been abducted.
Daniel Martell said he was in his home in Lansdowne Station, N.S., early Friday morning with the children's mother and their 16-month-old baby when he could hear six-year-old Lily Sullivan and four-year-old Jack Sullivan on the move elsewhere in their home.
"As soon as I noticed that I didn’t hear anything, I immediately jumped out of bed," he said in an interview outside the home. "I searched the bedrooms and looked in the backyard because they go looking for bugs and grass to feed the chickens … and when I noticed they weren’t there, I jumped in my vehicle and surveyed every dirt road and culvert I could find."
Martell, 33, said the pair probably slipped out a back door.
"They went to the back sliding door .... (and) it's virtually silent when you try to open it," he said, adding that both children were home from school because Lily had a cough. "We only found two boot tracks outside of the house … about 10 feet away from the backyard."
Asked why he thinks the pair may have been abducted, Martell said, "I have no idea why (anyone) would want to take them, but they're easy to take. If they would have wandered to the road, they would get in any car as long as you offered them food or water, or even candy or anything like that — or even to see mom and dad, they would immediately get in."
Police have said there is no evidence to suggest the children were abducted.
RCMP Cpl. Carlie McCann told an afternoon briefing that police continue to believe the children wandered from their home. "The searches are ongoing with that understanding. It is the information that's being acted on here."
Search director Amy Hansen said between 100 and 140 people were working on the search during the day, and 60 to 75 were expected to work through the night. McCann said drones, police dogs and specially trained crews would handle the night shift.
Meanwhile, Martell said the two children are outgoing and get along well. They came to live with him two years ago, he said.
"They'll talk to anyone. They're just looking to have as much fun as they can .... Jack just absolutely loves bugs, dinosaurs and anything like that," he said, his voice cracking with emotion. "But Lily loves girlie things, but she also loved doing everything with Jack. They're like best friends, not just brother and sister."
Martell said that since the disappearance, the children's mother has left to be with her family in another part of the province and has blocked him on social media.
“I’m feeling terrible, just like the last few days," he said. "It’s just me on my own with my family out here .... I don’t know why she left."
Martell said Lily and Jack would not have made it far in the woods on their own.
“They would have found them in the woods by now," he said. "So I’m urging the public to come forward if they have anything to say or to offer .… I don’t think they’d make it far. As soon as they get their clothes or boots wet, they immediately want to take them off and go back inside the house."
Donnie Parker, municipal councillor for the area, said his neighbours are very worried. "Everyone is just hoping … that we can find these children soon," he said as he arrived at the command post for the search, about a kilometre from the children’s home. "It’s a very tight-knit community and everyone is just hoping for the best."
Parker said he spoke with the missing children's mother a couple of days ago. “She has a little one, maybe less than a year old, in her arms. It’s tough. Something that could happen to anybody, and it happened to them.”
Near the command post, teams of searchers rested after spending hours pushing through dense woodlands. Other searchers could be seen from the highway, clambering over deadwood and through streams.
“If you have little ones at home, hold them close tonight,” Parker added.
McCann, the RCMP spokesperson, said ground search teams have "meticulously searched" several kilometres in the area where the children were last seen.
“Searchers are diligently keeping track of which specific sections of the ground have been covered and are applying their specialized skills."
Trained civilians from across the province have converged on the area around Gairloch Road, where the children’s family home is located. A helicopter and several remotely controlled aerial drones were also being used. McCann said police are asking the public to stay away from the area to allow trained searchers to do their work.
Lily Sullivan is described as having shoulder-length, light brown hair with bangs, and she might be wearing a pink sweater, pink pants and pink boots; Jack Sullivan has short, blond hair and is wearing blue dinosaur boots.
Martell said he wasn't sure what the little boy was wearing because he didn't see him before he left the house. But he said he saw Lily a few times as she poked her head through a bedroom doorway.
"I know they both took their boots," he said. "Lily had her backpack. It was white with strawberries on it."
The municipality’s warden, Robert Parker, said everyone in the area has the search on their minds. “I haven’t seen people in Pictou County as upset about an issue since we had Westray here in 1992,” he said in an interview, referring to the coal mine explosion in Plymouth, N.S., that claimed the lives of 26 miners.
“There’s a lot of hope and prayers right now, and tension.”
He described the search area as “backwoods.”
“The houses are sparsely located along the road, mostly dirt roads," he said, adding that the area is known for thick tangles, downed trees, most of them toppled by post-tropical storm Fiona in 2022. "It’s just real country with a limited number of people living along those roads.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 5, 2025.
— With files from Lyndsay Armstrong, Keith Doucette and Michael MacDonald in Halifax
Michael Tutton, The Canadian Press
