William Tyrell: Search for 3yo to be scaled back
A search for a three-year-old boy who went missing from his grandmother's home on the New South Wales mid-north coast last week is to be scaled back.
Hundreds of people have spent days scouring bushland around the property at Kendall, south of Port Macquarie, looking for William Tyrell.
Police said the search would continue into its seventh day on Thursday but would be scaled back.
William was wearing a Spider-Man costume had had been playing with his sister when he vanished last Friday morning.
Police officers, State Emergency Service (SES), Rural Fire Service (RFS) and members of the community have searched day and night for him.
Superintendent Paul Fehon said it was now a search rather than a rescue operation.
He said if William had wandered into the bush he was unlikely to still be alive.
"The experts cannot substantiate that survival in the bush would be there at this point in time," he said.
But he said there was still no solid evidence he had gone into the bush.
Specialist police, including the sex crimes squad, have been brought in to investigate the possibility William was abducted.
They have formed Strike Force Rosann and are continuing to canvass local residents, as well as examine possible sightings from all over the state.
Police said they were following a lead from shop owners in Kendall who had reported someone had asked for directions to the street William disappeared from.
"We're grateful of all the information that's been provided to us at this point in time and we are following up on all those leads of information," Superintendent Fehon said.
"We need to go through that information, collate it, analyse it and we need to substantiate or discount that information that's provided to us.
"We're still open-minded in regards to what has happened to young William.
"As I've indicated, we have no indication whether young William is out in the bush or whether other forms of human intervention have been involved.
"So again, we're appealing to any member of the public that may have known of any person or any vehicle that was to be in the vicinity of Benaroon Drive at Kendall or the township of Kendall, if they can provide that to Crime Stoppers."
On Tuesday the search area was extended to a three-kilometre radius from the grandmother's house, while trail bikes and four-wheel drives looked beyond that area.
Police divers waded through local waterways after spending the past few days searching dams on nearby properties.
