Cleo Smith found: Photographs of man arrested over missing girl case revealed

The first images of the man police have arrested in relation to the alleged abduction of little Cleo Smith have been revealed, showing the heavily bandaged 36-year-old in the back of an ambulance.

7NEWS cameraman Simon Hydzik captured the images of the man, who is under heavy police guard in the back of an ambulance in Carnarvon.

The man appears to have head injuries and is sporting a thick bandage around his head.

Two police officers watch over him while an ambulance paramedic sits at the head of the stretcher.

Deputy Commissioner Col Blanch said earlier on Wednesday the man fit the police profile and it took “every piece of the puzzle” detectives had collected from the four-year-old’s mysterious disappearance to lead them to knock down the door of the house in which she was locked.

“That includes (intelligence) from the public, that includes collection from phone towers, witness statements, you know, forensics, rubbish from the highways, CCTV cameras — they were all jigsaw pieces in the big puzzle,” he told The West Australian.

“We only needed one or two pieces to start making sense and fit what we thought happened.

“And once that started, it was a snowball effect. Once we get to that point in time, police make a decision to act on it.”

Mr Blanch said it was too early in the investigation to fully understand the motives of Cleo’s suspected abductor.

“That’s something that the investigators who are having conversations with him and others, as part of the entire investigation, are piecing together now,” he said.

“If we get to a point where we go before a court, that’s the time that we will then tell the story.

“What’s important now is that we really dot the i’s and cross the t’s of the investigation. We’ve got to make sure that whatever we do is professional, methodical, and all available evidence and information is collected and assembled in the right way.”