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You know that fingerprint technology solves crimes and identifies criminals. But did you know that it can also identify missing persons and reunite families? Here is how a fingerprint scanner helped to play a small part in reuniting a missing son, Connerjack Oswalt, with his parents.
A Freezing Man in Utah, 2022
The young man was cold and shivering when sheriff’s deputies found him outside a convenience store in Jeremy Ranch, Utah, early on the morning of April 9. Jeremy Ranch is in the Wasatch Range of the Rocky Mountains, and nighttime temperatures fall below freezing even in April.
This was not the first time that deputies from the Summit County Sheriff’s Office had encountered the man. Sheriff’s deputies had encountered him in the Park City area several times. While he never gave deputies his name, he never committed any crimes, so the deputies simply checked on his well-being.
On this cold morning, the young man was obviously not doing well, and wasn’t making sense as he talked to the deputies.
Deputies encouraged the man to warm up in the front seat of a police car. While he still refused to give his name, the deputies did obtain his consent to scan two “flat” fingerprints with a Watson device from Integrated Biometrics. Summit County had just received the Watson scanner, which MOSA Technology Solutions was providing to law enforcement agencies throughout the state of Utah.
Watson is a rugged fingerprint scanner that can capture two rolled prints. It is certified to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s highest “Appendix F” standard and is therefore suitable for searching government fingerprint repositories at the federal, regional, state, and local levels.
The Summit County Sheriff’s Office submitted the man’s prints for search against various databases, including federal fingerprint databases that included records from state systems. The search returned a “hit” against a set of prints from a Nevada arrest, indicating that they had identified the person.
Or at least they thought they had identified him.
A Distraught Man in Nevada, 2021
A few months earlier, in October 2021, a Nevada state trooper encountered a lone man walking on Interstate 15 near Goodsprings, Nevada, southwest of Las Vegas.
The trooper, Chris French, was concerned for the man because he appeared distraught and oblivious to his surroundings. Trooper French tried to talk to the man, who continued to walk away.
When the agitated man threw a rock at Trooper French’s head, French and another trooper apprehended the man.
The arrestee gave the police three different names and two different dates of birth. Initially booked and fingerprinted at the Clark County Detention Center as John Doe, police charged him with assault under the name Conner Oswald.
It was soon clear to everyone that the arrestee, booked as Conner Oswald, had mental health issues or a developmental disorder, and that incarceration was not in his best interest. The court suspended his jail sentence for assault, and he was ordered to pay a fine or perform community service.
But by February 2022, Conner Oswald had disappeared, and a warrant was issued for his arrest.
A Missing Teenager in California, 2019
With the information from Nevada, the Summit County Sheriff’s deputies now had a name—Conner Oswald—but not much else. The Nevada arrest record did not include a date of birth or a social security number, indicating to Summit County that something was amiss.
So, they began digging for information, including a search of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) database. While they couldn’t find Conner Oswald in the database, they continued to search, and eventually found a missing person with a similar name—Connerjack Oswalt. Oswalt had been reporting missing by the Clearlake, California Police Department in 2019, when Oswalt was just a teenager. His family had searched for Oswalt ever since, not knowing whether he was alive or dead.
The NCMEC report also stated that Oswalt was a high functioning autistic, which helped to explain his behavior. Children and teenagers with autism can sometimes simply wander away, as Oswalt did.
With this information, they established that Oswalt was now 19 years old and was separated from his worried family for nearly three years. Confident of the identification, the Sheriff’s Office contacted Oswalt’s parents, who were relieved to learn that he was still alive. Oswalt was reunited with his family, bringing closure to their years-long ordeal.
Impacting Lives Through Identity
For decades fingerprint technology has suffered from negative associations because of its use in criminal investigations. People refused to participate in non-criminal fingerprinting programs due to privacy and perception fears.
The Connerjack Oswalt story shows the positive impact of identification technologies. The government agencies and companies involved in this story used fingerprint technology to reunite the son with his parents.
But technology alone isn’t enough. You need dedicated people who want to use the technology to make a difference. As Summit County Sheriff Justin Martinez said in 2022 about his deputies:
“It’s the compassion, it’s the empathy, it’s looking at the bigger picture and feeling that there’s something here. Although he had a warrant, there was a something deeper that these individuals — my deputies — felt like they needed to explore.”
Integrated Biometrics is delighted that the technology was able to play a small part in bringing this family together. For more information on Integrated Biometrics’ family of FBI-certified fingerprint scanners, visit the IB FBI-Certified Fingerprint Scanners page or email sales@integratedbiometrics.com.
About Integrated Biometrics
Integrated Biometrics (IB) is a global leader in advanced biometric technology. Renowned for revolutionizing fingerprint scanning through its proprietary, FBI-certified Light Emitting Sensor (LES) technology, the company delivers cutting-edge fingerprint scanners, seamless biometric system integration software, contactless fingerprint capture, and comprehensive identity management beginning with infant identification solutions.
Trusted by organizations worldwide, Integrated Biometrics serves critical sectors such as law enforcement, military, election validation, financial services, and national identity programs. Its robust, high-performance products enable fast and accurate enrollment, identification, and verification, even in remote and extreme environments. IB continues to redefine the possibilities of biometrics—Impacting Lives Through Identity.
