A California teenager who was reported missing three years ago was found this month sleeping outside of a Utah gas station, police said.
Sheriff’s deputies encountered Connerjack Oswalt, 19, in the Park City area on April 9 after someone called in a report of a man sleeping outside a gas station, said Lt. Andrew Wright of the Summitt County Sheriff’s Office.
When deputies arrived, they scanned Oswalt’s fingerprints and found an arrest warrant for someone with a similar name that was issued out of Nevada in February, Wright said, and more research led them to a missing person’s poster for Oswalt in the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children database.
Deputies contacted authorities in Clearlake, California, where Oswalt was reported missing, and tracked down Oswalt’s mother in Idaho Falls, Wright said, leading to their reunification in Utah.
Oswalt’s mother, Suzanne Flint, told USA TODAY her son left home because “someone had allegedly told him he can go on a pilgrimage to find himself.”
“We’re still fitting all the pieces together and we’re going off what he’d told us,” Flint said.
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Oswalt, who is autistic, was reported missing on Sept. 28, 2019, when he was 17 years old, said Lt. Tim Hobbs from the Clearlake Police Department.
While he was missing, several people claimed to have seen him, but none were reported to law enforcement until weeks or months after the fact, police said. The lone confirmed sighting of Oswalt was in Willows, nearly 70 miles north of Clearlake, Hobbs said.
During the weeks before Oswalt was identified, residents in the Park City area had called the sheriff’s office about a homeless man who was pushing a cart, Wright said.
“Each time deputies interacted with Connerjack, he didn’t provide any identifying information,” Wright said. “We had no reason to demand that he identify himself on the previous encounters because he was not violating the law. However, deputies offered Connerjack resources such as transportation, food, etc. He refused all offers made.”
Social workers responded to help Oswalt after he was identified, Wright said.
Investigators are still unsure how he ended up in Utah.
“This remains the big question,” Wright told USA TODAY. “Where did his journey take him over the past two and a half years? We suspect he didn’t give identifying information because he was scared of police.”
Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/04/16/california-teen-missing-2019-found/7343915001/
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