Nova Scotia RCMP dispute witness accounts in missing children case

HALIFAX – Nova Scotia RCMP say they have found no evidence to back up witness accounts of a vehicle driving back and forth early in the morning near the rural, northeastern home where two young children went missing in May. 

Spokesperson Cindy Bayers said investigators conducted a thorough review of surveillance footage from the area in Lansdowne Station, N.S., where six-year-old Lilly and four-year-old Jack Sullivan were reported missing on May 2. 

In an email on Tuesday, Bayers said police “found no evidence of any vehicle activity at that time. As such, no driver has been identified, and the presence of a vehicle has not been substantiated as a key element in the investigation.”

The RCMP recently released new information about the case, including accounts from witnesses who said they heard a vehicle going back and forth near the children’s family home a few hours before they were reported missing.

Bayers said the witnesses — residents of Lansdowne Station — reported hearing a vehicle but did not visually confirm it.

The witness accounts were included in documents to The Canadian Press and other media outlets that the Mounties filed in court earlier this year to obtain search warrants for phone records, banking records and video, related to the case. Each document contains unproven statements made by police.

The documents say one of those residents, Brad Wong, told police on May 9 that in the early hours of May 2 he heard a loud vehicle coming and going from the family’s home on Gairloch Road. Wong said he could also see vehicle lights over the treetops and that the vehicle left their address three or four times after midnight and into the early morning hours.

The documents say Wong told police he heard the vehicle stop and return, remaining in earshot the entire time.

About a week after they spoke to Wong, police say they spoke to Justin Smith, the other nearby resident. Police say Smith told them on May 17 that he had spoken to Wong about the vehicle and that he also heard it in the early hours of May 2.

Police say Smith told them the vehicle was on Highway 289 and turned around by the railroad tracks near the area of Gairloch Road and Lansdowne Station Road.

According to the documents, Smith said he later spoke with Wong, who told him the vehicle he heard early that morning belonged to Daniel Martell, the children’s stepfather, who lived in the home with their mother, Malehya Brooks-Murray. Smith said Wong told him he had heard the loud vehicle come and go five or six times that night.

In an interview last week, Martell said claims that he was driving back and forth late at night are “complete nonsense.”

“My vehicle never moved out of the yard that night. And it never moved out of that yard the following day,” he told The Canadian Press over the phone. He added that at that time, the vehicle the family was using belonged to Brooks-Murray, and that it was “not a loud vehicle by any stretch of the imagination.”

Reached last week, Brooks-Murray declined to comment on the witness accounts. 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2025.