William Tyrrell's foster father joined the extensive police and State Emergency Service search for four days after the toddler disappeared on Friday, September 12, 2014.
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He recalled that fateful day before NSW Deputy State Coroner Harriet Graham today (March 27) at the coronial inquest into the boy's disappearance.
It is hoped all the evidence collected by Strike Force Rosann, the police unit leading the Tyrrell investigation, will be heard and tested at this inquest and conclude that William was taken as a result of human intervention, and not misadventure.
William went missing from his grandmother's front yard in Benaroon Drive, Kendall more than four years ago. He has not been seen since.
Police on the scene at the time of the initial search indicated while it was possible William was abducted, they were treating the investigation as a search for a lost little boy.
Come nightfall, William's foster father told the coroner he began to worry about food and shelter for their child, "if he was lost".
When asked by Counsel assisting the coroner, Gerard Craddock SC, if he believed William would be found over the weekend, the foster father replied: "I had hope. I had hope."
Port Macquarie SES coordinator Paul Burg on Wednesday testified people from Coffs Harbour to Newcastle travelled to the area to assist, searching parts of bushland thick with "impenetrable" lantana.
"A missing child will get people from anywhere to come," he said.
Leading Senior Constable Tim Williams said his investigation included consideration of a three-year-old's "lost person behaviour" such as wandering off during fantasy play or to see if his foster father had arrived home.
William's foster mother has previously testified her immediate thought when the boy fell silent while playing around the home was that he'd been snatched.
Mr Craddock on Monday said he expected the evidence would establish William was taken. Further evidence will be presented in August where persons of interest will be called to the stand.
The inquest so far:
William's final known movements:
- William's foster parents, who can't be identified, were planning to take the boy and his sister to Kendall on Friday, September 12, 2014 but left a day early.
- They arrived at 9pm on September 11 and put the children to bed, no one including the foster grandmother had advance knowledge they would leave Sydney at that time.
- The foster mother awoke the next morning to the sound of William's giggle in a nearby room, got up and opened the sliding glass door.
- She noticed two cars, parked on the nearby street, one was white the other grey, parked close together. They were dirty, had missing hubcaps and tinted windows.
- She did not see number plates but instead went to get the children ready as her husband prepared for a business call.
- William's foster father went to nearby Lakewood about 9am for a solid internet connection for the call. He had a prescription filled at a chemist there at 10.19am.
- William and his sister started riding bikes on the driveway after he left.
- Another man drove past them in the dead-end street. The foster mother locked eyes with him as he continued down the road in an old teal-coloured car.
- William and his foster mother played a game called "mummy monster" where they would roar at one another.
- They explored the tree-lined yard as William's sister sat inside with their grandmother drawing art for their late grandfather's grave.
- William's foster mother made cups of tea before snapping the now iconic photo of the three-year-old boy sitting on the deck dressed as Spider-Man at 9.37am.
- As the woman and her mother drank tea William jumped around the deck, again roaring while playing a new game called "daddy tiger".
- She heard him roar, then silence so she raced around the house trying to find him in the yard. She then searched inside the home in every cupboard and under the house.
- She checked her phone and saw a text from her husband saying he was nearly home after stopping to buy some newspapers at a nearby store.
- She ran out the front and told her husband William was missing. He began searching yards while the foster mother alerted neighbours and then police.
Australian Associated Press
