Connerjack Oswalt, a teenager with autism who vanished nearly three years ago in California, was found alive last week outside of a gas station in Utah, authorities said. Oswalt went missing in Clearlake on September 28, 2019, when he was 16 years old, and was reported missing the following day to the Clearlake Police Department.
NBC News reported that the search for Oswalt ended earlier this month after the Summit County Sheriff's Office found the California native outside of Jeremy's Store in Summit Park. Lt. Andrew Wright, with the Summit County Sheriff's Office, issued a statement on Friday, April 15, saying, "It boggles all of our minds. It's just a really miraculous discovery, if you will."
Several weeks before his identity was confirmed by authorities, residents in the area began calling Summit County Sheriff's Office to report a homeless person whom they had seen pushing a cart. According to Wright, the homeless person caught the attention of the residents as they do not get a lot of transients in the area because of the very cold weather.
Fingerprint scan leads to Oswalt discovery in missing person database
Wright added that deputies made contact with the person in question several times in the past and offered to help him find shelter. According to a report by CBS San Francisco, he always refused their offer and would not give them his name.
A person then called the sheriff's office on April 9, telling them that a young man was found sleeping outside a gas station. When deputies arrived there, the person was cold, so they let him warm up inside their patrol vehicle. Deputies took this as an opportunity to scan the person's fingerprint to know more about his background.
Wright said the fingerprint scan yielded a hit for an arrest warrant out of Nevada for assaulting a police officer. According to Wright, the warrant was issued back in February, but Oswalt's last name was wrong.
Deputies did some more digging as they suspected there was more to the story. Their hunch was proven correct as they later came across a missing person poster in the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children database for Oswalt. When both Clearlake police and Oswalt's mother were contacted, they confirmed that he was still missing.
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Oswalt reunited with his family after a three-year search
Upon learning the great news, Oswalt's family immediately drove from Idaho Falls, where they had relocated, to Utah to be reunited with him. Details about how long he was in Utah or how he arrived there in the first place remain unclear at this time. Clearlake police did reveal on Friday that they believe Oswalt was a runaway.
Suzanne Flint, Oswalt's mother, was not immediately available for comment. According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, Oswalt had a history of running away. Before Oswalt's disappearance in September 2019, SFGate reported that he had already gone missing in May of the same year after his mother took his phone away. Oswalt, who was diagnosed with autism in 2014, fled his home in Clearlake, taking only his cat when he ran away.
