Bodycam reveals moment missing teen is found after three-year search
The shocking moment a missing autistic teen was found alive outside a store three years after he disappeared has been captured in police bodycam footage.
Connerjack Oswalt, now 19, was just 16-years-old when he wandered away from his family's California home in 2019.
Despite a desperate search spanning several years, Connerjack's parents unable to find him until now.
"I never stopped looking for him," the now 19-year-old's mother Suzanne Flint told the Associated Press.
"There wasn’t a day I wasn’t searching for him, in some form or fashion".
Police had been trying to identify the teen for several weeks
Police from Summit County Sheriff’s Office in Utah, US, managed to identify the teen following several weeks of reports about a homeless man in the area.
"Through past interactions ... it was clear to deputies that the man communicated differently," the sheriff’s office said on Facebook, adding they had tried to help him on multiple occasions but he refused.
After several weeks, Mr Oswalt finally accepted help from authorities on April 9 after concerned locals reported him sleeping in a store car park in the freezing cold.
Footage from the Sheriff's office obtained by several news outlets shows police approaching the teen as he sits outside in the snow.
He was reportedly "shivering and cold" when police found him. Authorities convinced the teen to get into their warm patrol vehicle and began digging for his identity.
Police continued to search for more information
He eventually let deputies take his fingerprint, which alerted them to a warrant for Connerjack in Nevada.
However, police suspected there was more to the story, finding a missing person poster for him in the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children database.
Deputies were then able to contact Connerjack’s mum and stepfather, who drove four hours from their home to be reunited with him.
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“There wasn’t a dry eye in the room,” Sheriff Justin Martinez, from the Summit County Sheriff’s Office, told CBS News.
“They’ve been reunited with this individual they haven’t seen for three years when he was 16. He’s now 19.”
Investigators are still unsure how he ended up in Utah.
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