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Northern Territory police have issued a warning to community members they believe may be hiding information on the whereabouts of a 47-year-old man wanted over the alleged abduction of a five-year-old Aboriginal girl in Alice Springs.

The young girl, Sharon, was last seen by her mother at 11.30pm on Saturday. A short time before her disappearance she was seen near a man named Jefferson Lewis, who was holding her hand. An arrest order was issued for Lewis on Sunday.

On Wednesday, police said they believed Sharon was still alive. But they said if she was walking alone in the bush, her survival was “right on the threshold”.

Peter Malley, assistant commissioner for crime and intelligence, said police had found a “number of items” near the house on Marshall Court at Old Timers camp where the child was last seen.

“We seized a number of items from that crime scene, being a doona cover, the shirt that Jefferson Lewis was wearing – it was a distinct yellow one – and we seized a pair of child’s underwear from that location,” Malley told reporters. “These items have now been transported to Darwin and are underground forensic analysis and I expect to have that back tomorrow.”

Body worn camera footage of Lewis wearing a yellow shirt was captured by police who were called out to the camp on Saturday night, for an unrelated incident, and has been released to the media.

Sharon was last seen wearing a dark blue short-sleeve T-shirt with a white stripe around the neck and sleeves, and a pair of black boxers-style underwear.

The NT police commissioner, Martin Dole, told reporters that police believed Lewis was being helped by people he knew. “We absolutely, firmly believe that there’s members of the community that know where he is, where he went and how to contact him,” Dole said. “We implore those people to come forward and give us that information.

“We will follow up every single piece of information that we receive. The smallest detail could be the one that unlocks this investigation.

Malley described the search for Lewis as “like going back to the 1930s”.

“This man doesn’t have a telephone, he doesn’t have a bank account, he doesn’t have a car,” he said. “So some of the usual practices that we do in 2026 aren’t applicable, hence the number of resources we have on the ground. We’re knocking on doors, we’re going through houses, it’s old school policing. It’s a hard slog.

“Any place he’d frequented, we’ve been there. He has in the past had an ankle monitor on and so that also is being looked at and that revealed many places of interest. Anywhere he’s frequented we’ve been and we’ll continue to go until we get him.”

Malley said police had also spoken to Lewis’s family in Yuendumu and sought help from Western Australia police, who visited the East Kimberley community of Balgo where Lewis also has some family.

“We still think he’s here [in Alice Springs],” he said. “But like I said I’ve been wrong before and we’re considering everything.”

The search for Sharon has covered 5 sq km on foot and 80 sq km by car and air, Malley said. Seventy people were searching on Tuesday and 100 on Wednesday, as well as hundreds more volunteers.

“We speak to survival experts and we look at if she was wandering around alone in the bush, how long she could survive for. We’re still within that timeframe,” he said.

“We’re considering everything and she may have come to harm, but we still think she is alive and our number one mission is to find her safe and well.”

As of Wednesday afternoon here had been no confirmed sightings of either Sharon or Lewis. Anyone with information was asked to contact police directly.

“This is the number one priority of Northern Territory police,” Malley said. “We have so many resources in Alice Springs, we’ll get to you pretty quick”

The minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarndirri McCarthy, travelled to Alice Springs to offer her support.

“My message to little Sharon is that we’re all here for you and we certainly hope we can find you,” the Northern Territory senator told ABC Alice Springs on Wednesday.

“And my message to Sharon’s family is that we are certainly here with you. Our hearts, our love and our prayers and thoughts are with you.”

McCarthy said the support from the broader community had been “overwhelming”. The local IGA supermarket and a local bakery have donated food to those undertaking the search effort. Others have donated water.

“It’s quite overwhelming really, I’m deeply touched to see the effort that’s taking place here, as it should,” she said. “It’s really beautiful when community can come together … I thank the people of Alice Springs for doing that.”