WIS News 10 - Columbia, South Carolina | DNA shows child found in Illinois not missing NC boy

DNA shows child found in Illinois not missing NC boy

(Chicago-AP) May 2, 2003 - The FBI says DNA tests show a boy abandoned at a suburban hospital is not the same boy who vanished in North Carolina two and a half years ago. Special agent in charge Thomas Kneir says the results were conclusive that the boy is not Tristen "Buddy" Myers.

The mother of the missing boy told a Durham, North Carolina, television station she'd also been told DNA test results show the boy is not hers. Raven Myers said she's been told by FBI agents the Chicago boy is not her son.

Federal authorities in Chicago say they'll release the results at a news conference Friday.

Myers family spokeswoman Jackie Jacobs was near tears as she announced the Sampson County news conference. She refused to take questions.

The investigation into the boy's identity began when he was placed in foster care after a man named Ricky Quick left an Evanston, Illinois, hospital without him. Quick says he's raised the child since he was a baby. The boy Quick calls Eli resembles Tristen, who was four when he disappeared.

A woman in southern Illinois also denies the boy is Tristen. She says her sister is the one who gave birth to Eli Quick, and that the sister gave the boy to Ricky Quick when he was seven or eight months old.

One of Buddy's cousins, Jamie Richmond, says he was told X-rays showed the boy had the same breaks in his leg as Tristen, who was injured in a car accident less than a year before he disappeared.

Tristen wandered away from his aunt's home with two dogs on October fifth, 2000. The dogs eventually returned without him.

Ricky Quick was taken into custody after he brought the boy to St. Francis Hospital in Evanston in February. The hospital staff became suspicious and called police, who found Quick was wanted for shoplifting. The boy is now with social workers in Chicago.

updated 3:47pm by Chris Rees