A man has been jailed for 13 years and six months for abducting a four-year-old girl from a remote Western Australia campsite.
Terence Kelly, 36, pleaded guilty last year to taking Cleo Smith from her family’s tent in October 2021.
The kidnapping sparked a huge police search before Cleo was found alive 18 days later at Kelly’s house, minutes from her own home.
Kelly was arrested shortly afterwards and admitted child stealing.
Handing down the sentence at Perth District Court, Chief Judge Julie Wager said the crime displayed “the highest level of seriousness”.
The court heard how Kelly kept Cleo at his house for the entire 18 days, in a bedroom with a door modified to be lockable from the outside.
Cleo Smith had been staying with her family in a tent at a campsite about an hour’s drive north of her home town, Carnarvon, 900 kilometres (559 miles) north of Perth.
She was last seen by her mother when she woke in the middle of the night and asked for a glass of water. The next morning, her mother discovered Cleo and her sleeping bag missing, and the tent door open.
More than 100 police officers were involved in the investigation.
The breakthrough reportedly came when a mobile phone number was traced to a phone tower near the campsite around the time of Cleo’s abduction.
This led officers to Kelly’s locked house in Carnarvon, where she was found inside alone at 01.00 local time.
Video of the rescue showed the young girl identifying herself to officers and smiling.
