Nearly a week after two young siblings disappeared in Nova Scotia’s Pictou County, police and the public are still searching the rural area for any signs of the pair.
Around 150 people have been searching daily for Lily and Jack Sullivan, aged six and four, since they were first reported missing last Friday.
The RCMP — who maintain there’s no evidence the children were abducted, and that the two wandered away from their home in Lansdowne Station, N.S. — have deployed helicopters, drones and investigative teams in the search, with no success so far.
Despite announcing Wednesday that police are scaling back their search to target specific areas, RCMP said their investigation will continue.
“We’re not packing up, and we’re not giving up,” Staff Sgt. Curtis MacKinnon told reporters at an afternoon briefing.
Here’s everything we know about what may have happened to Lily and Jack, and the efforts to find them:
When did the children go missing?
The siblings were reported missing at around 10 a.m. on May 2, and were last seen at their home on Gairloch Road in Lansdowne Station, a rural community about 30 km southwest of New Glasgow.
A screenshot of Google Maps shows the location of Lansdowne Station, N.S., in relation to New Glasgow and other surrounding communities. Two children, aged six and four, were reported missing from their home in Lansdowne Station on May 2, 2025.
Google Maps
Their stepfather, Daniel Martell, told Global News that Lily and Jack were at home that morning with him, his partner and their baby. He said when he noticed they were missing, he began looking for them outside but could not find them.
“They hate being wet and cold, so they immediately would have come back into the house. The only two (foot) prints are right beside the house facing the road and that’s it,” he said.
Martell told the Canadian Press 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.
RCMP describe Lily Sullivan as having shoulder-length, light brown hair with bangs, and they say she might be wearing a pink sweater, pink pants and pink boots. Martell told Global News she was also carrying a white backpack with strawberries on it.
Jack Sullivan has short, blond hair and is wearing blue dinosaur boots. Martell said he had not seen Jack on Friday morning, but believed he was wearing a brown shirt and pants with a pull-up diaper underneath.
Four-year-old Jack Sullivan, left, and six-year-old Lily Sullivan, right, missing from their home in rural northeastern Nova Scotia, were last seen Friday morning in the community of Lansdowne Station. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Nova Scotia Ground Search and Rescue Association.
SDV
Why no Amber Alert?
Martell is calling for the search area to be extended to include provincial borders and airports, in case the children were abducted.
“I have no idea why (anyone) would want to take them, but they’re easy to take,” he told the Canadian Press. “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.”
However, the RCMP have said there is still no evidence that Lily and Jack were taken by anyone.
That’s why police did not issue an Amber Alert, which are typically pushed to cellphones and other devices to warn the public about an abducted child.
The RCMP has issued two public alerts since the children were reported missing: a vulnerable missing person alert was sent to Pictou County residents on May 2, and a broadcast intrusive alert was issued on May 3 to Antigonish, Colchester, and Pictou counties.
Investigators said Wednesday that the Nova Scotia RCMP’s major crimes unit and other units have been involved in the case from the beginning, but have yet to find any evidence of an abduction.
“If we had any information that led that way and we felt that we could provide anything with the public, we would have done that,” said Staff Sgt. Robert McCamon, who leads the major crimes unit.
McCamon wouldn’t comment when asked if there were any criminal components or suspects that investigators were considering.
What has the search entailed?
Up to between 140 and 160 people have assisted in the search daily, police have said, many of them volunteers from the community and surrounding areas.
Helicopters, drones, police dogs and specially-trained crews have combed through dense woodlands and other difficult terrain looking for any sign of Lily and Jack.
“There’s a lot of hurricane damage from Fiona a couple of years ago, and we’ve had teams struggling to get through areas,” search manager Amy Hansen of Colchester County Ground Search and Rescue, who is coordinating teams from across Nova Scotia, told reporters Wednesday.
“They’re pushing through all these areas, going through all these dead falls, going through waterways and anything possible just to cover the search area. … We are exhausting people and we’re starting to see more injuries coming back the last couple of days.”
Hansen added she participated in a helicopter search Tuesday and saw first hand how much ground has been covered over the past six days.
“It is immensely clear, looking from above, based on the orange tags on the trees, how thoroughly and meticulously the area has been searched,” she said.
What happens now?
MacKinnon said Wednesday the search operation will be “scaled back” and transition from “a full-scale search to searches of more specific spaces that have already been searched by our teams.”
“We want to circle back to increase the probability that all clues have been found,” he said.
Officials said crews will be looking for anything that, due to difficult terrain and weather, may not have been found during an initial search.
No one at Wednesday’s briefing would explicitly say if the move to scale back the search was based on the belief that Lily and Jack are no longer alive after six days in the woods.
Yet MacKinnon acknowledged cadaver dogs could be brought in as a “next step” as part of the scaled-back operation.
“If we thought they were alive right now, we’d still be out there,” he said.
“Based on the experts and the review of the facts, the inclement weather, the timeframes and their age, the likelihood that they’re alive right now is very low,” McCamon added.
— with files from Global’s Rebecca Lau and the Canadian Press