Nova Scotia offering $150,000 reward for information about two missing children

HALIFAX — Nova Scotia’s Justice Department is offering a reward of up to $150,000 for information about two young children who were reported missing almost seven weeks ago.

Provincial Justice Minister Becky Druhan issued a statement Thursday saying the disappearance on May 2 of six-year-old Lilly Sullivan and her four-year-old brother Jack is being felt across the province and beyond.

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“My heart goes out to the family, the community and everyone who has been working to find these children since Day 1,” Druhan said. “Police and investigators are working tirelessly to find answers, and I urge anyone with information to please share this with the RCMP as soon as possible.”

The reward amount will depend on the “investigative value” of the information, the statement said.

The Mounties started a missing persons investigation after they received a report that the two children had wandered away from their rural home in Lansdowne Station, N.S., a heavily wooded area 140 kilometres northeast of Halifax.

Family members told police they last saw Lilly inside the home on Gairloch Road and could hear Jack walking around inside on the morning of May 2 around 10 a.m., and police later confirmed the siblings were with their family the previous afternoon.

Several extensive searches have covered more than five square kilometres around the home, where the hilly terrain is covered in a think tangle of brush and trees toppled by post-tropical storm Fiona in 2022.

On May 7, the search was scaled back after police announced there was little chance the pair could have survived on their own in the woods for that long.

Still, subsequent searches have focused on certain areas, but very little evidence of their whereabouts has been found aside from a boot print on a nearby pipeline trail.

Daniel Robert Martell, who has described himself as the missing children’s stepfather, has told The Canadian Press he voluntarily took part in a four-hour interview with major crime investigators and handed his cellphone to police.

Martell said he and the children’s mother, Malehya Brooks-Murray, had been together for more than two years and moved to a trailer-home in the community about two years ago.

He has said that on the morning of May 2, he and Brooks-Murray were in their home’s bedroom with their 16-month-old baby when Lilly poked her head through the doorway, and they could hear Jack in the kitchen.

Martell said he then heard the sliding door that leads to their backyard open and close. Within minutes, he said he headed outside to search for the two, driving his vehicle on back roads and looking in culverts.

He said Brooks-Murray left the home the day after the search began, and has been staying with her mother in Wentworth, N.S.

Lilly Sullivan is described as four feet tall, weighing 60 pounds, with light brown hair and hazel eyes. At the time of her disappearance, she was believed to be wearing a pink Barbie top, pink rubber boots with a picture of a rainbow on them, and carrying a cream-coloured backpack that features an image of a strawberry.

Jack Sullivan is described as three-foot-six, weighing 40 pounds, with dark blonde hair and hazel eyes. He was believed to be wearing a pull-up diaper, black Under Armour jogging pants and blue rubber boots with dinosaurs on them.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 19, 2025.

Michael MacDonald, The Canadian Press