The decade-long mystery of a missing teenager has finally been solved following a DNA breakthrough.
Jacob Lyon, 19, was reported missing in Niceville, Florida, by his mum Julie in February 2016, after not hearing from him for three months.
Yet skeletal fragments found about 12 miles away in 2022 have been positively identified as Jacob.
The sheriff’s office said yesterday: ‘This is not the result our community hoped for.
‘For his family, we hope there is peace in knowing Jacob has been found.’
Jacob’s cause of death is unknown.
Jacob was last seen in October 2015 and had been couch-surfing at the time, according to the missing person database, the Charley Project.
He lived with mental health conditions and had been treated at a psychiatric hospital the month before.
Police and county sheriffs spent years following tips about the teen’s whereabouts, ‘all of which have been fruitless’, the force said in 2020.
Lyon’s remains were found by a man who was clearing a wooded area along Miramar Beach two years later.
Police said his remains were found where a Sleep Inn, a midscale hotel, once stood.
Medical examiners struggled to test the remains, handing them over to state officials with more resources.
The sheriff’s office said: ‘DNA testing on skeletal remains is very complex from degradation over time, environmental exposure, and limited genetic material, all of which can make extraction, amplification and interpretation incredibly challenging.
‘This process can take a long period of time.’
But state medical examiners got a match and confirmed the news on January 21.
Dustin Cosson, of the sheriff’s office, said: ‘Ten years is a long time. But Jacob is home.
‘Jake is back with his family, and family can make a little bit of closure. And we hope that we can continue to get answers again.’
Niceville Police Lieutenant John Lee said the force’s top priority is to find closure for Jacob’s mum, according to WMBB.
Judith said on social media that she will ‘always love’ her son, adding: ‘Always loved and never forgotten.’
His family spent years sharing posters on Facebook to help find Jacob.
‘We may not be much, but we are to Jacob,’ a group run by one of Jacob’s relatives said in March 2016
‘We are his voice because now he doesn’t have a voice! Let’s find him and bring him home. His family needs and misses him.’
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