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A California teen with autism found sleeping in Utah parking at a gas station three years after he disappeared from his family home.
Coniorjack Oswalt, who left his home in Clearlake, California in September 2019 at the age of 17 and has not been seen since, was found by sheriff’s deputies shivering in the cold while sleeping at a gas station in Summit County, Utah this week. .
Connorjack Oswalt, 19, was found in Utah after disappearing in California at the age of 17 (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children)
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Oswalt appears to be homeless and has reportedly lived on the streets there for about two weeks.
His family has been looking for him for years, handing out flyers, scanning social media and desperately chasing fruitless tracks. They even moved back to his hometown, Idaho Falls, hoping he would eventually return.
“We will follow all hints of something that remotely resembles him,” said his stepfather, Gerald Flint. “It was a nightmare.”
Oswalt, who was diagnosed with autism and other mental illnesses, was 17 when he left the family home in Clearlake, California. His mother, Susan Flint, remembered making quesadillas, but when it was time for lunch, he left.
“I never stopped looking for him. “There wasn’t a day that I didn’t look for it in some form or way,” she said. The exact circumstances surrounding his disappearance and whereabouts over the past two years are being clarified, police said.
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Deputies have clashed with Oswalt several times in recent weeks, but the teenager refused to help them when they sought services, until they finally agreed to seek warmth in a patrol car at a frozen gas station.
This led to an unfulfilled February order in Nevada.
Officers set about handing over documents in search of reports of missing and endangered children. After about 16 pages, they found a 2019 missing person report from Clearlake, California. Although there was a slightly different spelling of the name than Nevada’s order, the photos matched and they called his family.
Pedestrians walk in front of a street sign that reads “Face Mask Needed” in Summit County near Park City, Utah, USA, on Saturday, August 1, 2020. Photographer: Kim Raff / Bloomberg via Getty Images (Kim Raff / Bloomberg in Getty Images)
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When Flint first received the call, they were worried that their son had been found dead. After his wife confirmed her identity through a birthmark, Gerald Flint quit his job, jumped in his car and drove four hours to Utah.
“Everyone in the room was in tears. “They went beyond everything, put in hours of work,” he said. “They could have rejected it, but they didn’t, and that made everything different in the world.”
Autism-conscious social workers took care of Oswalt after reuniting with his family, said Summit County Sheriff’s Lt. Andrew Wright. His family hopes to bring him home soon.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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