Sylvester Lopez, missing 1989, identified

[Valasca]

The remains of a 13-year-old boy missing since 1989 are being returned to his family, the Eureka Police Department Missing Persons Unit announced today.

On Feb. 21, 1989, Sylvester Lopez, who was living in a foster home in Eureka, was reported as a runaway juvenile. The EPD learned Lopez was possibly staying with friends in the Hoopa-Weitchpec area, where he was from. The Humboldt County Sheriff's Office was unable to locate him, according to an EPD press release.

In September of that year, partial skeletal remains were recovered from the Trinity River near Hoopa and turned over to the sheriff's office. While the remains were initially identified as female, a recent Humboldt County Coroner's Office examination revealed that they belonged to a young male. Modern testing methods make it easier to identify the sex of juvenile skeletal remains, according to the press release.

The skeletal remains were sent to a Department of Justice lab for testing.

The Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office had assisted EPD in obtaining DNA from Lopez's biological mother in 2008. She died of natural causes two days later. The DNA samples were sent to the DOJ lab and stored for possible matching with unidentified remains.

In April 2012, the lab notified the coroner's office of a possible match on the skeletal remains recovered in 1989. There was a positive match with Lopez's mother and a possible match with Lopez. Once it was determined that no other family members
were missing, and the coroner notified Lopez's family that his skeletal remains had been found and identified, according to the press release.

http://www.times-standard.com/breaki...989-identified

[AngelFire]

So sad. Now he can be laid to rest properly.

[Tundratot]

It is sad. His mother never got to know he was found. He lay in a morgue or a cemetery for years unidentified. Apparently, no one ever held responsible for his death.