UPDATE:
The FBI has confirmed that the DNA results have been returned indicating the person in question is not Timmothy Pitzen.
A statement from a spokesperson reads:
“A local investigation continues into this person’s true identity.
“To be clear, law enforcement has not, and will not, forget Timmothy, and we hope to one day reunite him with his family. Unfortunately, that day will not be today.”
A teenager claiming to be a boy who disappeared seven years ago has said that he “escaped” his kidnappers.
Timmothy Pitzen was reported missing from a motel in Illinois in 2011 when he was six-years-old.
He had been on a road trip with his mother who was later discovered to have died by suicide. She had left a note saying that her son was with people who would take care of him.
“You’ll never find him,” she had written.
Police in Illinois are now travelling to Cincinnati to meet the teenager who is claiming to be Pitzen. He was found wandering in a car park in Kentucky yesterday morning, 800km from where Pitzen was last seen.
CNN reports that the woman who approached the teen described him as “fidgety.” She also said that he told her he had run for two hours and that his stomach hurt.
Later, a person called 911 to say that the boy approached them and asked for help.
“He walked up to my car and he went, ‘Can you help me?'” the caller said. “‘I just want to get home. Please help me.'”
“I asked him what’s going on, and he tells me he’s been kidnapped and he’s been traded through all these people and he just wanted to go home.”
Pitzen was last seen at a waterpark in 2011. He and his mother appeared to have taken a holiday together where they had visited theme parks and a zoo.
A DNA result to determine the teenager’s true identity will take about 24 hours.
