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U.S. news

California teen with autism who vanished 3 years ago is found alive
in Utah

Connerjack Oswalt went missing in 2019 when he was 16 years old.
Police found him sleeping outside a gas station last week.
    
Link copied
[                    ]
April 15, 2022, 8:52 PM UTC
By Minyvonne Burke

A teenager who vanished nearly three years ago in California was
found alive outside a gas station in Utah last week, authorities
said.

Connerjack Oswalt, who has autism, went missing in Clearlake on Sept.
28, 2019, when he was 16 years old. He was reported missing to the
Clearlake Police Department the following day.

The search for him ended earlier this month after the Summit County
Sheriff's Office found him outside Jeremy's Store in Summit Park.

Connerjack Oswalt.Connerjack Oswalt.Summit County (Utah) Sheriff

"It boggles all of our minds," Lt. Andrew Wright with the Summit
County Sheriff's Office said Friday. "It's just a really miraculous
discovery if you will."

Several weeks before Oswalt's identity was confirmed, residents in
the area began calling the sheriff's office to report seeing a
homeless person pushing a cart. Wright said they did not have a lot
of transients in the area because it gets very cold because of its
high elevation.

Deputies made contact with the person several times and offered to
help him find shelter, but he always refused and would not give his
name, Wright said.

On April 9, a person called the sheriff's office and said a young man
was sleeping outside a gas station. When deputies arrived, the person
was cold so they let him warm up in a patrol vehicle. This time,
deputies scanned the person's fingerprint.

Wright said they got a hit for an arrest warrant out of Nevada for
assault on a police officer. The warrant was issued in February but
spelled Oswalt's last name wrong, according to Wright.

Suspecting that there was more to the story, deputies did some more
digging and came across a missing person poster for Oswalt in the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children database. When
contacted, both Clearlake police and Oswalt's mother confirmed that
he was still missing.

Immediately, Oswalt's family drove from Idaho Falls, Idaho, where
they had relocated, to Utah to be reunited with him.

Details about how long Oswalt was in Utah or how he arrived there
remain unclear. Clearlake police said Friday that they believed he
was a runaway.

Oswalt's mother, Suzanne Flint, was not immediately available for
comment.

Minyvonne Burke  

Minyvonne Burke is a senior breaking news reporter for NBC News.

 

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