
On what was described as a "typical" Friday morning, three-year-old Anthony 'AJ' Elfalak went missing from his family's Hunter Valley home.
AJ, who has autism and is non-verbal, was being looked after by his older brothers who were playing outside their home in Putty.
His mother and godfather were preparing lunch in the kitchen while his father was outside fixing quad bikes. Then, one of his brothers needed to go to the bathroom.
"The oldest boy needed to go to the bathroom and took the youngest one, AJ, and he left him just inside the dining area," his godfather Alan Hashem told the Today show.
"After a few minutes, the boys come out and entered through the other part of the house and the mother goes, 'Where's AJ?'"
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"The boys had a puzzled look on their face. We all stand up and at that moment I had the closest view to the driveway and noticed a white ute, we believe either a Mazda or a Toyota, a much older model. It was slowly driving through here."
Mr Hashem went on to say that the family didn't think much of it at the time and thought "if AJ's gone somewhere it's not going to be far".
The family took four ATVs to try to search for the boy, covering thousands of square metres, but he could not be found.
That afternoon, just before 12:30pm, police officers responded to reports of the missing toddler at the 263-hectare property.
A land and air search area soon went underway, as PolAir, dog squad, divers, the mounted unit, State Emergency Service (SES), Rural Fire Service (RFS) and Volunteer Rescue Association (VRA) personnel searched the rugged area over for the following four days.
On Sunday, police seized a white ute which the family noted was in the area around the same time AJ went missing.
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The following morning, Mr Hashem said he feared his godson had been abducted and claimed that CCTV cameras he installed on the property were missing footage during the time of his disappearance.
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