He told police he’d been kidnapped by two men seven years ago and he had recently been staying at the Red Roof Inn in Ohio.
A teen who told police he’d been in captivity for the past seven years is claiming to be Timmothy Pitzen, a boy who went missing in 2011 after his mom’s suicide.
Timmothy, then 6, and his mother, 43-year-old Amy Fry-Pitzen, went on a road trip from their home in Aurora, Illinois, on May 11, 2011. Timmothy was last seen at a water park in Wisconsin the next day. Three days later, his mom was found dead by suicide in a hotel room in Rockford, Illinois.
Fry-Pitzen reportedly wrote a note saying she’d left Timmothy with people “who love him.”
“You’ll never find him,” the note read, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The teen who said he is Timmothy was found wandering around in Kentucky on Wednesday. He asked a bystander for help, who then called police, according to reports.
The boy, who said he is 14, told police he’d been kidnapped by two men seven years ago and he had recently been staying at the Red Roof Inn in Ohio.
The teen said he’d found a chance to escape and ran across the bridge into Newport, Kentucky, but he wasn’t aware of where the hotel had been, according to ABC News. The closest Red Roof Inn is in Sharonville, Ohio.
The teen, whose face was bruised, told cops that his kidnappers were white men with a “bodybuilder-type build” who drove a Ford SUV with a Wisconsin license plate, according to authorities.
The FBI and local authorities are working to determine whether the teen actually is Timmothy. A DNA will take 24 hours, according to the Aurora Police Department.
Timmothy’s disappearance was widely covered in the news and the search for him spanned across Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa.
Alana Anderson, Timothy’s grandmother, told WCPO that they have never stopped looking for Timmothy.
"[I'm] cautiously hopeful, very cautiously hopeful," Anderson said of the news. "And if it turns out to be him, we'll be thrilled."
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