Autistic Teen Missing for Almost Three Years Found Alive

Connerjack Oswalt had been missing since September of 2019. His family had been searching for him. They scanned social media and handed out Flyers, but unfortunately no one could find him. They even moved back to the town of his birth which is Idaho Falls in the hopes that he would eventually make his way home. “Any hints at something that remotely resembled him, we would follow up on it,” said his stepfather, Gerald Flint. “It’s been a real nightmare.”

This past week his family got news that Connerjack was alive and well. Connerjack was found in the Kimball junction area of Utah pushing shopping cart. The police had been called about a homeless person multiple times from concerned residents. Deputies responded each time and offered to help the young man who was not violating the law. Each time the young man refused any help.

On April 9th, a concerned community member contacted the Summit County Sheriff’s Department about a young man sleeping at the Jeremy store at Jeremy ranch.  A mini mart in that community. The deputies quickly responded and found the cold young man shivering. They got him into the warm patrol car and began trying to find out who he was. Through past interactions with the young man and the interaction on Saturday, deputies figured out that the young man communicated differently than most people. Deputies and the dispatchers of Summit County Sheriff’s Department began to investigate who this young man was and where he came from. Once in the patrol car and warmed up, the young man agreed to let the officers take his fingerprints. This led to them finding an outstanding warrant from February in Nevada.

Officers didn’t stop there. They knew this young man was in the middle of a humanitarian crisis and wanted to find out who could help him. They began searching through missing persons reports and endangered children. After going through 16 pages of missing people and endangered children they found a report of a missing person from 2019 in Clearlake CA. Though the name was spelled differently from the warrant that they found, the police officers noticed that the young man and the missing child in the photo matched.

When the police called his family, his family at first thought that his body had been found. They never in their wildest dreams expected to find their son alive after almost three years. Connerjack’s mother had the police identify him through a birthmark that was on his neck. After confirming it was her son the police had found, she asked her husband to go get her son.  He drove 4 hours to Utah.

“Everyone in the room was in tears. They went above and beyond, put hours of work,” he said. “They could have dismissed it, but they didn’t and that made all the difference in the world.”

Deputies say that social workers familiar with autism and how to handle people with autism are currently taking care Connerjack Oswalt. Their goal and hope is to bring Connor Jack home to his family.