Police to learn if teen found in Northern Kentucky area is long missing Illinois child

Illinois detectives are working with law enforcement in the Northern Kentucky area to determine if a boy who reportedly told authorities he fled his captors is a child who went missing eight years ago.

The FBI’s Louisville and Cincinnati offices are coordinating with police from Newport, Ky., Cincinnati and Aurora, Ill., to determine if the boy is Timmothy Pitzen who has been missing since May 2011 when he was 6 years old, according to the FBI’s Louisville field office.

The boy told police that he was Timmothy and that he had escaped from two kidnappers that had been holding him for seven years, according to Cincinnati news station FOX19 and other media. He said the people who held him were two white men and described their builds, clothes and tattoos, according to an incident report obtained by the news station.

Newport police found the 14-year-old boy after some residents noticed he was acting oddly or scared and eventually asked for help, according to Cincinnati news station WKRC-TV and other outlets.

The boy told investigators that he ran from his captors in Sharonville, Ohio, and crossed a bridge into Kentucky, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Investigators in the Sharonville area searched motels there after the boy said he’d been held in one, the newspaper reported.

Timmothy would be 14 years old now, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. He was last seen at a water park in Wisconsin Dells, Wis., where he had been taken on a trip by his mother, who was later found dead in Rockford, Ill.

Timmothy’s mother was found dead by suicide, according to The Beacon-News. She had told police that she’d left the boy with others.

This story will be updated as more information becomes available.

This story was originally published April 3, 2019 at 4:20 PM.