An autistic teen who vanished from his family's California home nearly three years ago has been found alive in Utah.
Connerjack Oswalt was just 17 when he disappeared without a trace. Sherriff's deputies in Summit County found the now-19-year-old sleeping in a convenience store last weekend, according to a report by ABC News.
After inviting the teen to come and warm up in their patrol car, deputies managed to convince him to have his fingerprints taken so that they could identify him. They were shocked to discover that the young man was the same person who had been reported missing from Clearlake, California back in 2019.
More on this incredible story below:Oswalt's mother, Suzanne Flint, described how the family had searched for him for years, handing out fliers, scanning social media, and even moving back to his birth town Idaho Falls in the hope that he would make his way there.
"I never stopped looking for him. There wasn't a day I wasn't searching for him, in some form or fashion," she said.
Meanwhile, Oswalt's stepfather, Gerald Flint, spoke about how they had chased down lead after lead about the teenager's whereabouts, saying: "Any hints at something that remotely resembled him, we would follow up on it."
"It's been a real nightmare," he added of the last three years.
Police are still investigating the exact circumstances surrounding Oswalt's disappearance and where he has been for the past three years. When they identified the missing teen, they reached out to his parents and had his mom confirm his identity by giving the location of her son's birthmark.
Gerald Flint then left work and drove four hours to be reunited with his missing child in person.
After meeting with his family, Oswalt is now being cared for by social workers knowledgeable about autism. His parents are hoping that soon they will be able to take him home at last.
"We didn’t treat [Oswalt] as a criminal. We treated as somebody that has something deeper that we needed to dig into," country Sheriff Justin Martinez told ABC News. "That intuition is what really reunited this family," he added.
