JUST IN: Police have successfully restored deleted security footage from a gas station less than a mile from where 4-year-old Gus Lamont disappeared — and at exactly 3:42 p.m., a small figure matching Gus’s description appears on the screen.
According to law enforcement sources, the footage — recovered from a damaged hard drive at the Oakridge Fuel Stop — shows a child in a light-blue T-shirt and yellow shorts walking past the station’s outer fence, heading toward the wooded area that later became the center of the search. The timestamp matches the approximate window when Gus was last seen by his family.
However, what has caught investigators’ attention is a shadowed vehicle visible in the upper corner of the frame. The car, described as a dark SUV, appears to slow down briefly as the child passes, before pulling away and disappearing off-camera.
Forensic video specialists are now enhancing the clip frame by frame to determine whether the child is indeed Gus — and whether the SUV’s license plate can be identified. Police say that the angle of the camera and the distance make the images unclear, but the movement and clothing are a near-perfect match to what Gus was wearing the day he vanished.
A detective close to the investigation told reporters:
“This is the first piece of footage showing a figure that could be Gus outside the family’s property. What happens in those few seconds could answer everything.”
Authorities are also investigating why the footage had been partially deleted from the gas station’s system. Technicians found that the video segment from 3:35 to 3:50 p.m. was overwritten, suggesting possible manual interference.
The gas station owner said he had no idea the file was missing and has since handed over the original DVR unit to police.
The FBI’s digital forensics division is now assisting local authorities in recovering the remaining corrupted frames, hoping to capture a clearer look at the vehicle — or the person who may have been inside it.
