(CNN) — Officials in Summit County, Utah, had been hearing for several weeks about a young man walking around the area with a grocery cart.
When they found him last Saturday, they found him more than 1,000 kilometers away in northern California, nearly three years after he had been reported missing.
The Park City Sheriff’s Office said the sheriff’s deputy responded at a gas station in the Park City metro area on the morning of April 9, when a “concerned community member” saw the man sleeping there. Summit County in a Facebook post. This area is about a 40-minute drive from Salt Lake City.
The sheriff’s office said the deputies offered the man a seat to warm up inside one of their vehicles and began an investigation into who he was. “Through previous conversations and Saturday’s conversation, it became clear that the man communicated differently,” the sheriff’s office said, adding an autism awareness hashtag to its Facebook post.
A dispatcher began searching the pages of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s website, and found a missing Connorjack Oswalt poster in more than a dozen pages.
This photo of Connorjack Oswalt was seen on his missing poster, which said that he went missing in Clearlake, California in September 2019.
Oswalt, now 19, was reported missing in September 2019 about an 11.5-hour drive from Clearlake, California, northwest of Sacramento and Summit County.
Authorities believed it was the same person they found trembling at the gas station.
“The deputy began making phone calls and was able to contact Connorjack’s mother,” Lieutenant Andrew Wright of the Summit County Sheriff’s Office told CNN in an email.
His mother told authorities that Oswalt had a distinctive birthmark on his neck. Agents found the trail in Oswalt, Wright said.
Although officers had spoken with Oswalt earlier that day, they did not share who he was and police “had no reason to ask for his information because he was not breaking the law,” Wright said.
Wright told CNN that Oswalt’s stepfather and grandfather had gone to Park City, Utah, to identify and meet him in person.
Body camera footage provided by the sheriff’s office shows Oswalt was confronted at the gas station that day.
In one of two body camera videos sent to CNN from the sheriff’s office, Oswalt’s stepfather is seen screaming in disbelief when police show him a mugshot of Oswalt to confirm it was the same person. Wright told CNN that Oswalt had a prior warrant for his arrest.
“is she?” Oswalt’s mother could be heard from the phone, which was on speakerphone.
“A little older, but yes,” replied Oswalt’s stepfather.
“My beloved is alive,” the mother is heard sobbing over the phone. “Could you please go pick it up?”
Officials said Oswalt’s mother and stepfather have moved to Idaho Falls, Idaho, after he went missing.
Oswalt was still receiving care and resources and has not yet been to Idaho, Wright said.