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Body camera footage captured the moments a mother and stepfather realized their autistic son who had been missing for nearly three years was still alive after being picked up by Utah authorities.
Connerjack Oswalt was just 17 when he was reported missing from his home in Clearlake, California, on Sept. 28, 2019. Since then, his mother, Suzanne Flint, and stepfather, Gerald Flint, said they’ve searched all over northern California, and have been working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, The Polly Klaas Foundation and the Department of Justice without any success.
Oswalt was diagnosed with autism in 2014. A few weeks ago, people began reporting to the Summit County Sheriff’s Office in Utah seeing a man pushing around a shopping cart. A concerned citizen called the dispatch center again this weekend to report a man sleeping in front of a gas station market in Jeremy Ranch.
Body camera footage showed the man shivering in front of the store, and deputies offered him a chance to sit in their vehicle to warm up. He wouldn’t tell deputies his name but eventually allowed them to scan his finger. A database showed he had a warrant out of Nevada under the name Connerjack Oswald.
Connerjack Oswalt was just 17 when he was reported missing from his home in Clearlake, California, on Sept. 28, 2019. Body camera footage from Summit County, Utah, showed the moment he was reunited with his stepfather.
(KSTU/NNS/Summit County Sheriff’s Office)
Believing there might be more to the story, deputies took it upon themselves to comb through records from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and about 16 pages in, after scouring through names and photographs, came across the name Connerjack Oswalt, with a slightly different spelling than that listed on the warrant. They then called his family, who had moved back to Idaho to the town of Oswalt’s birth.
Gerald Flint said he immediately drove from Idaho Falls to Park City, Utah, and body camera footage showed him sitting at a table in the sheriff’s office, with his wife on speakerphone.
“Is it him?” Suzanne Flint is heard asking in the clip.
Connerjack Oswalt, 19, was found in Utah after going missing in California at age 17
(National Center for Missing and Exploited Children)
“He’s a little bit older, but yeah,” Gerald Flint replied.
Suzanne then cried out, “Oh my God!”
“Oh wow!” Gerald let out. And again, the mother is heard on the phone saying: “My sweetheart’s alive!”
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Neither deputies nor Oswalt’s family know where he has been for the past nearly three years, but Oswalt’s mother said she’s just grateful to have her now 19-year-old son back safe and sound.
