The four-year-old was brought home safely after she went missing for more than two weeks
The man arrested over the disappearance of four-year-old Cleo Smith, the Australian girl who went missing from her family’s tent in the town of Carnarvon, has reportedly been hospitalised by another inmate.
Terry Kelly, the 36-year-old suspect who is believed to have been keeping the girl at his house, had only been in his prison holding cell for a matter of hours on Wednesday November 3. Cleo was found in a small room in a house mere minutes from her family home.
However, after Kelly’s mother told the Daily Mail Australia that he had been beaten “black and blue”, Western Australia Police confirmed that he had been moved to a hospital.
Though he is believed to have been assaulted by another cellmate, it is thought that some of his injuries were sustained through self-harm. While there are images of him with a large bandage around his head, it is thought that his condition is not serious.
There are also fears that another man who refers to himself as Terry Kelly has been wrongly accused and has received multiple death threats following the case.
Terrance Flowers – who also goes by the nickname Terry Kelly – has apparently been misidentified as the kidnapper and threatened with ‘spearing’ (a traditional Aboriginal punishment where a victim gets speared in the thigh or calf) over his supposed crimes.
Many are concerned that his targeting is not just a case of mistaken identity but a wider symptom of larger underlying racism that still prevails towards the Aboriginal community in the country.
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