Efforts to locate missing Nova Scotia siblings 'scaled back' as search enters sixth day

Efforts to locate a missing brother and sister in rural Nova Scotia have been "scaled back" as the search enters its sixth day.Six-year-old Lily Sullivan and her four-year-old brother, Jack, were last seen on Friday morning near their home in Pictou County 20 km southwest of New Glasgow, which is itself 160 km southwest of Halifax."Since the search began on May 2, it has been concentrated in the Gairloch Rd. area and has covered four square kilometres of heavy wooded, rural terrain," Pictou County District RCMP Staff Sgt. Curtis MacKinnon said during a press conference on Wednesday, noting that 160 trained volunteer searchers and others have put in tens of thousands of search hours.He went on to say that there have not yet been "any confirmed reports of sightings."."As of today, May 7, the active search efforts to locate Lily and Jack will be scaled back," MacKinnon continued. "We're transitioning from a full-scale search to searches in 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."According to the RCMP, the Sullivan siblings are believed to have wandered away from home on Gairloch Rd. in Lansdowne Station around 10 a.m. on May 2. A vulnerable missing persons alert was issued not long after, though the situation did not meet the threshold for an Amber Alert. Lily has shoulder-length light brown hair and is said to have been wearing a pink sweater, pink pants, and pink boots. Jack has short, blondish hair and was wearing boots with dinosaurs on them..Since Friday, a multi-agency response has mobilized including resources from ground search and rescue teams from across Nova Scotia, as well as the Civil Air Search and Rescue Association Department of Natural Resources Air Services, and "several RCMP units, including RCMP Police Dog Services, RCMP Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (drones) operators, and others." "Search teams have been strategic and thorough in their work," Acting District Policing Officer Insp. Mike Ingles said. "They're using a variety of tools and resources as they look for the children in the heavily wooded rural area."Anyone with information is asked to contact Pictou County District RCMP at 902-485-4333, or anonymously via Nova Scotia Crime Stoppers, toll-free, at 1-800-222-8477. People can also submit a tip via the internet at www.crimestoppers.ns.ca..Daniel Martell, Lily and Max's stepfather, told CTV News that he and his wife, Malehya Brooks-Murray, told the children to quiet down as their 18-month-old baby was sleeping. It wasn't until around 20 minutes later that the parents realized the siblings were gone."A few minutes went by, I heard nothing," Martell said. "Got up, went out in the kitchen, checked everything, I seen they weren’t there. Checked their bedrooms and they weren't there. So I looked out the backyard, that’s the only other place they would go, and their boots were gone. The door, the sliding door, was closed."It wasn't long before the RCMP arrived and crews began helping them with their search."The house is just silent," Martell lamented. "There's no magic in the air. It's just silence."He described Lily and Jack as autistic, and made it clear that they would not have gone into the woods by themselves.