About 150 police officers and trained volunteers are scouring a large search area west of the Montreal island, as the operation to locate a missing three-year-old girl enters its third day.
As of Wednesday morning, there still appeared to be no sign of three-year-old Claire Bell.
Her mother, Rachel-Ella Todd, is scheduled to make her second appearance at the Salaberry-de-Valleyfield courthouse.
Todd, who turned 34 on the eve of Claire’s disappearance, was arrested and charged with child abandonment late on Monday.
The missing girl is three feet tall, weighs 35 pounds and has brown eyes and brown hair. According to police, she was last seen wearing grey pants and a long-sleeved shirt with pink around the collar and is likely barefoot.
Claire was last seen at her residence near Newman Avenue in Montreal’s LaSalle borough Sunday morning at around 9:45 a.m. ET.
The Sûreté du Québec (SQ), Quebec’s provincial police force, says Claire’s mother reported her missing a few hours later at a store in Coteau-du-Lac, about 50 kilometres west of Montreal.
An employee of the store said the woman drove her car into the parking lot and ran into the store in a panic. CBC News is not identifying the employee because she is not authorized to speak on behalf of the store. The employee mentioned that the woman said she’d lost her child and couldn’t remember what happened. Another employee then called 911.
On Wednesday morning, SQ spokesperson Éloïse Cossette said investigators had received hundreds of tips for the case.
The search efforts have been focused on areas near the junction of highways 30 and 20 as well as areas near Highway 40, west of the island of Montreal — an area police said is difficult to access due to dense vegetation.
As the search for three-year-old Claire Bell continues, police charged her mother, Rachel Todd, with child abandonment. Sources told Radio-Canada that Todd appeared confused when speaking to police and had recently looked up child funeral urns on her phone.
Don’t try to search for missing girl, police tells public
Police are discouraging citizens from conducting their own searches as they might destroy tracks and hamper the SQ’s efforts. On Wednesday, the SQ reiterated that the public can contribute to the search efforts by looking out for the grey Ford Escape with the licence plate K50 FVE that the mother used between 9:45 a.m. and around 3:30 p.m. on Sunday.
“She left LaSalle and made it to Coteau-du-Lac — that’s a very large zone,” said Cossette.
“We’re calling on potential witnesses in case they saw that vehicle on some isolated road or if they have security cameras in front of their homes or businesses or on their vehicles … Ultimately, we want to recreate the entire route that the mother followed with her daughter.”
According to Radio-Canada sources, Todd didn’t seem lucid and made confused remarks which complicates the work of investigators. Sources also told Radio-Canada an analysis of Todd’s phone revealed searches for children’s funeral urns, as was first reported by the Journal de Montréal on Tuesday.
A video posted by Todd in the hours before Claire’s disappearance has surfaced on TikTok. Radio-Canada has confirmed the account belongs to her.
In the short video, Todd is holding Claire and speaks into the camera saying: “You try that again and this is going to get ugly.”
The caption reads: “Have you come up against a mother with nothing to lose????”
CBC does not know the context in which the video was filmed. Quebec provincial police said it is not commenting on the video.
The charge against Todd alleges that she abandoned her daughter and put her life and health in danger. If found guilty, the maximum sentence is five years in prison.
On Monday evening, police announced they had found a dead brown Chihuahua around Highway 30 in the Vaudreuil-Dorion area.
The dog matched the description of the one thought to be with the girl when she was last seen. As of Tuesday evening, police were still working to confirm that it’s the same dog.
If you’re affected by the details in this story, you can find mental health support resources in your province or territory.
