Australian man admits to abducting four-year-old girl from family tent
24 January 2022, 07:14
Police found Cleo Smith alone in a house 18 days after she went missing last October.
A man has pleaded guilty to abducting a four-year-old girl from her family’s camping tent on Australia’s west coast last year.
Police found the girl, Cleo Smith, alone in a house in Carnavon, a town of 5,000 people, 18 days after she went missing last October.
Terence Darrell Kelly, 36, admitted to the abduction during a brief court appearance in Carnarvon on Monday in a video link from a Perth prison, 900 kilometres (560 miles) to the south.
He faces a potential sentence of up to 20 years in prison on a conviction of forcibly taking a child aged under 16. He will next appear in a Western Australian state District Court in Perth on March 20.
Kelly has not entered a plea to other criminal charges he faces, including assaulting a public officer. Those charges have been adjourned to a later date.
