Connerjack Oswalt: Missing autistic California teen found in Utah after THREE YEARS
An autistic teenager who went missing from California has been found after three years. The teary-eyed parents of Connerjack Oswalt were reunited with their son in Park City, Utah, after authorities identified him as the missing teen. The then 16-year old was reported missing in September, 2019 by his family in Clearlake, Calif.
As reported by The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, Oswalt was diagnosed with autism in 2014 and has had a 'history of running away.' September 2019 was not the first time he ran away. This had happened before in May 2019 as his mother had taken his phone away.
READ MORE
Can dairy products lead to autism? Internet slams PETA and labels it a conspiracy theorist group
In May 2019, Oswalt fled Clearlake, but he only took his cat along with him. Following this, he went missing again on September 28, 2019.
The teen was reunited with his family weeks after Summit County Sheriff’s Office was alerted about a man pushing a shopping cart and sleeping in the cold outside Jeremy’s Store, a convenience store by a gas station in Park City. As per footage collected and shared by CBS News, officers approached Oswalt in front of the store and they offered him a seat inside the car to warm himself up.
Reportedly, Oswalt did not tell the officers his name when he was questioned. However, he did allow them to scan his fingers and the result revealed a warrant out of Nevada under the incorrectly spelled name "Conner Jack Oswalt". Since officials and authorities felt the information was incomplete and something just did not sit right, they started digging and researching even more. Later, they found a missing person profile from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children database where a match was found.
Oswalt's family had moved from California to Idaho since his disappearance. "We searched all over California, we had the missing centers of America, we had the Polly Klaas Foundation and the DOJ," Oswalt's mom Suzanne told CBS News. "We've had a lot of false hope over the last two-and-a-half years," added Oswalt's stepfather Gerald Flint. When he heard Oswalt had been found, Flint rushed from Idaho Falls to Park City where he confirmed his identity and called Oswalt's mother.
“There wasn’t a dry eye in the room,” Sheriff Justin Martinez told CBS. “They’ve been reunited with this individual they haven’t seen for three years when he was 16. He’s now 19.” Oswalt's profile has now been removed from the various missing persons databases.