Claire Bell said 'mom told me to wait' after Quebec toddler found at side of Ontario highway: report

Along with joy and relief at finding three-year-old Claire Bell alive in eastern Ontario after four days of searching come questions of how she survived and why she was alone at the side of a rural highway 150 kilometres from her home in Montreal. Police officially aren’t saying much about the case, as their focus moves from the public search into a criminal investigation stage, but published accounts say the girl made a staggering and perplexing statement to her rescuers. “I’m waiting for mom, she told me to wait for her,” Radio-Canada, CBC’s French-language branch, reported Claire telling police who found her. “Mom told me to wait,” the Journal de Montréal, a daily French-language newspaper reported the girl said. Police officials would not confirm the conversations, saying there is already an ongoing prosecution in Quebec, after the girl’s mother, Rachel-Ella Todd, 34, was arrested late Monday night and charged with child abandonment while Claire was still missing. There also may now be a prosecution in Ontario, as the girl was allegedly abandoned abut 50 kilometres into Ontario from the Quebec border. Police credit information from the public for helping solve the girl’s disappearance. The strange way the girl was reported missing and distressing twists during the search galvanized public interest in the case. Police asked the public to help them track the movement of a grey 2007 Ford Escape, which helped investigators shift their attention into eastern Ontario. The SUV was reported to have been seen in the St-Albert and Casselman area. A drone operated by the Ontario Provincial Police spotted the girl around 2 p.m. on Wednesday in a field along an on-ramp for Highway 417 near the rural community of St. Albert, Ont., about 150 kilometres west of Montreal. OPP officers following behind the drone then swooped in to rescue her. Police said Claire was “fine,” and described her as being conscious and able to talk. Photos from the scene show her looking stable and well, although a bit startled and unkempt. She was taken to hospital for a medical evaluation as a precaution. “We were preparing for the worst, I think everyone was,” an Ontario police source said. Officers were overjoyed when she was found. Officers were seen celebrating the outcome of their efforts. “The last few days, officers and members of the community have held our breath and hoped while we searched,” OPP Acting Staff-Sgt. Shaun Cameron. “Now we exhale as one, knowing she is safe.” “This is why we are police,” said Sûreté du Québec Capt. Benoît Richard. Cameron said police would not have found the girl in time without “critical information” from the public. “This was a search where we knew, especially given her age, that every hour mattered,” he said. “This search proves that when a child goes missing, there are no interprovincial boundaries. There is only one goal: to find them.” Claire’s father, Matthew Bell, thanked the public and asked for privacy in a social media post. Quebec Premier François Legault described the girl’s safe return as “almost a miracle,” and thanked police as well as members of the public who called in tips. Todd appeared before a judge on Tuesday by video from a police station, represented by a legal-aid lawyer. She was back in court briefly on Wednesday when the case was put off until Friday for a potential bail hearing. Claire was last seen Sunday morning, Father’s Day, with her mother, at the apartment where Claire and Todd lived. News that she was missing was revealed about six hours later when her mother pulled into a roadside fireworks and souvenir store about 55 kilometres west of their apartment. Police said she told an employee she had lost her child and didn’t know where she was. An enormous search began that shifted and grew from the Sunday missing child report through 72 hours. Hot days with little or no access to water would have posed the greatest risk to the rescued Montreal toddler’s survival, a search and rescue coordinator who participated in the search told the Montreal Gazette . “Water, normally after about three days, becomes a significant concern,” said Dany Chaput, on-site coordinator for the Association of Quebec Volunteers for Search and Rescue. The three days Claire was missing “were very hot. There was a lot of sun,” he said. Around 120 volunteers under his direction spent three days combing areas near the Coteau-du-Lac exit where police had found the mother’s car. Those volunteers “drank enormous amounts of water and, despite that, had headaches, dizziness.” Claire wouldn’t have had the same access to water, Chaput said. “I don’t think she necessarily had access to her primary needs.” National Post with additional reporting by Montreal Gazette and The Canadian Press • Email: ahumphreys@postmedia.com | Twitter: AD_Humphreys

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