Boy Found In Illinois May Be N.C. Child Missing For Years

AP/Google News ^ | 4/29/03

[stlnative]

Boy Found In Illinois May Be N.C. Child Missing For Years Authorities Use DNA Testing To Confirm Boy's Identity

POSTED: 8:31 a.m. EDT April 29, 2003

UPDATED: 8:57 a.m. EDT April 29, 2003

CHICAGO -- A young boy who was reported as missing more than two years ago from his North Carolina home may have been found in the Chicago area.

The DNA will tell the tale -- but the aunt of the missing North Carolina boy said if a child found in Illinois isn't him, then he has a twin.

Illinois child welfare authorities say it could be weeks before tests determine whether the boy found in Evanston, Ill., is Tristen "Buddy" Myers.

Authorities are trying to make sure that the child they have found in Chicago is actually Myers, (pictured here prior to abduction) before they confirm his identity. DNA tests are being conducted to determine the child's identity.

In February, a man brought a boy matching the same description to St. Francis Hospital, complaining about the child's aggressive behavior. When the man tried to leave with the boy, suspicious staff members called police. The boy was taken into protective custody.

Evanston police discovered the man was wanted for retail theft and took him into custody.

Sampson County, N.C., Sheriff's Sgt. Darold Cox said the boy has the same facial features, scars and speech impediment as Myers.

The boy remained in foster care Monday night as authorities used DNA testing to try to confirm his identity.

Donna Myers, the boy's aunt, said authorities in Chicago contacted her and told her there was a possibility that a boy living in the Chicago area was her nephew. She was shown a picture and said it looked a lot like Buddy.

"I can't believe it could be him," Donna Myers said. "I mean, 2 ½ years later. I really believe it's him. He looks like him in the eyes and ears," she said.

Buddy disappeared from his aunt's home on Oct. 5, 2000. According to Donna Myers, he left with his two dogs while she was taking a nap. The dogs returned days later, but Buddy was not found, despite manhunts involving hundreds of searchers.

Buddy would be more than 6 ½ years old. He has blond hair and blue eyes. He was just over 3 feet tall at the time of his disappearance.

[stlnative]

Possibly another homecoming for a missing child

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Ping

[snopercod]

Where in NC did he live?

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Tristen "Buddy" Myers - Missing Child - Web Page

[Kimlee]

Here is a photo of him. Not the best, but only up-close one I found
http://www.childsearch.org/tristen_myers.html

[Sloth]

Illinois child welfare authorities say it could be weeks before tests determine whether the boy found in Evanston, Ill., is Tristen "Buddy" Myers.

Why weeks? It won't take weeks to run DNA analysis. They said the same thing about Laci Peterson and it only took a couple of days.

[Kimlee]

ah well. I was too slow :)

[stlnative]

Roseboro, NC

Another Web Page for Him

They really think it is him!

[stlnative]

Google Search for Tristen "Buddy" Myers."

Lots of info about when he came up missing and some follow up stories

[Hatteras]

I caught this on the local Raleigh news last night. The pictures they showed sure are promising. Keeping fingers crossed for the family.

[Constitution Day]

Sampson County, apparently. That is down in southeastern NC.

I remember when he disappeared... here is a link to the local news story:

Authorities Hope Missing Sampson County Boy Has Been Found In Chicago

Tristan 'Buddy' Myers Disappeared From Sampson County Home Nearly Three Years Ago

POSTED: 1:01 p.m. EDT April 28, 2003

UPDATED: 8:20 a.m. EDT April 29, 2003

SAMPSON COUNTY, N.C. -- DNA testing is under way to see if a boy found in Chicago is Buddy Myers. Investigators say there are a lot of similarities between the two boys.

The picture on the left is a computer composite of what Buddy Myers would look like today. The picture on the right is Eli Quick, who was found in Chicago.

Tristen "Buddy" Myers disappeared after walking away from his Sampson County home in October 2000. Investigators have been following several leads in the case, but up until now, those leads led to nowhere.

Sgt. Darold Cox, of the Sampson County Sheriff's Office, said he is following his most promising lead yet. Authorities in Chicago arrested a man with a boy matching Myers' description.

	TRISTAN "BUDDY" MYERS Tristan 'Buddy' Myers Images Cue Center for Missing Persons National Center For Missing & Exploited Children

"He was stopped at a traffic stop, and he was a wanted person, so they incarcerated him and took the little boy into custody," Cox said.

Authorities say the man told them that the boy's name is Eli Quick, but he could not name any of the boy's family members. Police called Social Services, who placed the boy in foster care. Social workers have been trying to confirm the boy's identity, but they said the boy may have been brainwashed.

The social workers' search led them to the National Center For Missing & Exploited Children Web site where they saw Myers' picture.

Donna Myers, Buddy's aunt, said she cannot help but to get her hopes up.

"There are so many things that point to it being him that we are just praying that it is," she said. "If it's not him, he's got a twin."

Authorities say the boy has the same facial features, scars and speech impediment as Myers.

Authorities have sent DNA samples from Buddy's mother to Chicago for comparison. Authorities say it could be up to six weeks before they get some kind of confirmation.

"One day is too long for me. I would like to know now," Myers said.

Authorities say the man arrested in Chicago was traveling from Colorado. Authorities say he was wanted on outstanding shoplifting warrants,

Previous Stories:

• November 1, 2002: Video: The Search For Buddy Myers
• July 16, 2002: Family Celebrating Buddy Myers' 6th Birthday Without Him
• October 5, 2001: Myers' Family Remembers Him On One-Year Anniversary Of His Disappearance
• July 27, 2001: New Leads in Buddy Myers Case Come Up Cold
• July 16, 2001: Missing Boy Remembered On His Fifth Birthday

Reporter: Melissa Buscher
Photographer:
OnLine Producer: Kamal Wallace

Copyright 2003 by WRAL.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[CFW]

Saturday, March 15, 2003 8:23AM EST

Keeping hope alive for the lost
N.C. woman prays for missing nephew

By MARTHA QUILLIN, Staff Writer

If a dog barks in the middle of the night, Donna Myers jumps out of bed and runs to a window in her Roseboro home, squinting into the dark to see whether her young nephew has finally found his way back.
Like the family of Elizabeth Smart, who returned to her home this week nine months after she was abducted from her bedroom, Myers has not given up on the possibility that Tristen Alan Myers, who disappeared Oct. 5, 2000, at age 4, is alive and well.


In that sense, she is also like the families, and their advocates, of scores of North Carolinians who are reported lost each year. Several of the lost have been missing for years.

Donna Myers had just taken Tristen into her home two months before, in an effort to bring some stability to his young life. Born to a teenage mother, Tristen had lived for a time with his maternal grandmother until she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Another relative who took him in accidentally injured the child while working on a car; he rolled it backward onto Tristen, not knowing the boy was there.

Tristen was just getting used to Myers' home in western Sampson County when the worst happened, she recalled Friday.

They were at home together and had been watching a Barney video, singing along with the songs. Tristen started looking sleepy, so Myers, too, lay down on the couch. Myers, who had changed her work schedule so she could be home with Tristen in the afternoons, drifted briefly off to sleep.

If Tristen asked her to go outside with him -- which he usually did -- she didn't hear him. Neither did she hear the bell she put on the door so she would know when he slipped outside, as he was prone to do.

When she awoke, he was gone.

Thousands of searchers, including volunteer soldiers from nearby Fort Bragg and helicopter teams using infrared technology, found no trace of Tristen, except for one of the wrestling action toys Myers had bought him that day. The family's two dogs, which had been with him, eventually returned home alone.

Last year, the N.C. Center for Missing Persons, a state agency, received reports of nearly 10,000 lost North Carolinians, according to its Web site. Almost 73 percent of those were under age 18.

Many of those cases were runaways located within a few days. Others were more complicated -- the victims of kidnapping, for example, by a parent who didn't get legal custody in a separation or divorce agreement and spirited the children away. Investigators say those cases can be difficult to solve because the kidnapper might have help staying out of sight.

Only a handful of cases each year are officially described as "nonfamily abduction," in which investigators have concluded that the child was taken by a stranger or acquaintance.

Elizabeth Smart was one of those. So is Tristen.

Myers thought of Ed Smart, Elizabeth's father. "Well, his prayer was answered," she said. "Maybe mine will be next."

Myers thinks that maybe someone had seen her and the boy in town and watched them, waiting for him to get out of her sight. She thinks they might have been waiting with a car on the other side of a wooded area behind the house.

By now, Tristen would be 6. He has blond hair and blue eyes, and when he disappeared, he went by the nickname "Buddy." He has a scar on the left side of his neck.

Monica Caison, who runs the CUE Center for Missing Persons in Wilmington, is still looking for him. Her group, which can mobilize thousands of volunteers to search for missing people and provide support to their families and to local law enforcement agencies, didn't get involved in Tristen's case until he had been missing for days. By the time local law enforcement would let her in, she said, his abductor could have colored the child's hair, changed his appearance, taken him out of state.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children lists 38 cases from North Carolina.

Caison said Tristen's case and others like it illustrate the need for a nationwide Amber Alert, which would allow information about missing children to be immediately broadcast over highway alert signs. North Carolina already can have local radio and television programming interrupted when a child disappears.

Maybe then, Myers says, other families won't have to worry, as she has, whether their child is safe and well cared for. She wonders: Is he in school? Are they taking him to the doctor when he needs care?

She hopes someone will recognize Tristen's picture and call in the tip that will bring him home.

"I pray they will. I can't let go of hope. No one is going to take that away from me."

[billbears]

Saw this on the local news last night bump

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Good Find!



Look at his chin, jaw line, nose and ears. His hair would be dark since he is older and has not been bleached out from the summer sun yet. I'd say it his him or I least pray that it is him.

[ChemistCat]

I read this as "BODY FOUND..." so am very excited that that is not the case and the boy is alive. I hope he's been well-cared-for these past couple of years, and that his family can cushion him from this new episode of upheaval in his life. Remember, to us it's that he's found--to him, it's yet another abrupt and extreme change in his life, yet another change in NAME.

[CFW]

But, where has he been for the past two years? And with whom? How did he get there from NC?

I didn't see any mention of his parents in the articles I read, just his aunt. It'll be interesting to see how this unfolds. Prayers that it's him.

[Constitution Day]

Good find? Not really - WRAL is my local news and I saw the story this morning. :)

It sure looks like him to me! I hope it is, for the family's sake.
I would hate for it NOT to be him after they have heard this news & gotten their hopes up.

[CFW]

In February, a man brought a boy matching the same description to St. Francis Hospital, complaining about the child's aggressive behavior. When the man tried to leave with the boy, suspicious staff members called police. The boy was taken into protective custody.

I found this part interesting. If you have a kidnapped child, would you take him to the hospital complaining of his agressive behavior?

[dwilli]

The ears are different especially his left one unless they change with age.