Police in Illinois state of US on Thursday awaited the results of a DNA test to determine if a 14-year-old boy found wandering in Kentucky a day earlier was Timmothy Pitzen, who disappeared in 2011 just before his mother committed suicide, according to local media reports.
The teenager told authorities in Newport, Kentucky he had been held by two white men he described as “body-builder types” for seven years, and had escaped from them and run across a bridge from Ohio into Kentucky. He said his name was Timmothy.
Police in Aurora, Illinois, were running a DNA test to confirm if the boy was indeed the missing child, CBS Chicago reported on Thursday, citing police officials.
The FBI’s Louisville, Kentucky, office said it was working with the FBI in Ohio, as well as police in Newport, Kentucky, Aurora, Illinois, and other agencies on a missing child investigation. The agency offered no additional information and did not identify the child.
Aurora police on Thursday said they had not yet confirmed the teen’s identity, but hoped to do so soon.
“Our primary focus here is in assisting the FBI in their investigation, and provide information from our missing person case involving Timmothy Pitzen, should this prove to be him,” Aurora police said in a Facebook statement.
After discovering the boy on Wednesday, authorities in Newport issued numerous requests to local police agencies to search motels for the men that the teenager said had been holding him.
The police department in Sharonville, Ohio, was one of the agencies that received those requests. Its police chief, Steve Vanover, told Reuters on Wednesday that Kentucky officials had described the teen’s harrowing account of how he escaped his kidnappers.
The boy described the men as “body-builder types” who drove a Ford SUV and were staying at a Red Roof Inn, Kentucky detectives said in the request.
Timmothy Pitzen was last seen with his mother in May 2011, according to the Chicago Tribune, when she pulled her then-6-year-old son out of school in the Chicago-area suburb of Aurora and took him on a trip to a zoo and water parks. Amy Fry-Pitzen committed suicide soon afterwards in a motel room, according to the paper and other media reports.
“Tim is somewhere safe with people who love him and will care for him,” she wrote in a note, according to reports by ABC7 Chicago. “You will never find him.”
