DNA test to be done to confirm identity of missing child of Kentucky

Illinois police on Thursday were running a DNA test to determine if a 14-year-old boy found wandering in Kentucky a day earlier is Timmothy Pitzen, who disappeared in 2011 around the time his mother committed suicide, according to local media reports.

The teenager told authorities in Newport, Kentucky that he had been held by two white men he described as "body-builder types" for seven years, and had escaped from them and run across a bridge from Ohio into Kentucky. He said his name was Timmothy. Police in Aurora, Illinois, said they were running a DNA test to confirm if the boy was indeed the missing child, CBS Chicago reported on Thursday. A representative from the Aurora Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The FBI's Louisville, Kentucky, officials said it was working with the FBI in Ohio, as well as police in Newport, Kentucky, Aurora, Illinois, and other agencies on a missing child investigation. The agency offered no additional information and did not identify the child. After discovering the boy on Wednesday, authorities in Newport issued numerous requests to local police agencies to search motels for the men that the teenager said had been holding him.

The police department in Sharonville, Ohio, was one of the agencies that received those requests. Its police chief, Steve Vanover, told Reuters on Wednesday that Kentucky officials had related to them the teen's harrowing account of how he escaped his kidnappers. The boy described the men as "body-builder types" who drove a Ford SUV and were staying at a Red Roof Inn, Kentucky detectives said in the request.

Vanover said he could not confirm whether the account was true. One witness told CBS Chicago they saw the boy talking with police and that he seemed very afraid and looked like he had been punched in the face.

Timmothy Pitzen was last seen with his mother in May 2011, according to the Chicago Tribune, when she pulled her then-6-year-old son out of school in the Chicago-area suburb of Aurora and took him on a trip to a zoo and water parks. Amy Fry-Pitzen committed suicide soon after in a motel room, according to the paper and other media reports. "Tim is somewhere safe with people who love him and will care for him," she wrote in a note, according to reports by ABC7 Chicago. "You will never find him."