How Nevada trooper’s video helped solve case of teen missing nearly 3 years

Connerjack Oswalt’s family never stopped looking for the autistic teen when the 17-year-old disappeared from his California home in September 2019.

The family searched relentlessly, handing out flyers and trying to find him on social media, The Associated Press reported earlier this year.

“Any hints at something that remotely resembled him, we would follow up on it,” his stepfather, Gerald Flint, said at the time.

Now, Nevada State Police videos detail how a trooper’s tumultuous 2021 encounter with a “John Doe” during a pedestrian stop along Interstate 15 would end up playing an important role in figuring out what happened to Oswalt.

The Nevada bodycam video and law enforcement documents obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal show on Oct. 19, 2021, Nevada trooper Chris French encountered an unidentified young man walking along a lonely, remote stretch of I-15 near Goodsprings some 25 months after Oswalt went missing.

French would write in an arrest report that he approached the pedestrian because he was concerned for his well-being as 18-wheelers and cars whizzed by along the busy roadway just feet from where the young man was walking.

French tells the man to stop and talk to him, according to the video, but the trooper is ignored.

“I’m just going to tell you you better stop and have a conversation with me or we are going to have issues,” French is heard saying on the videos.

“Have a conversation with me like a young man should and have a little respect for your elders,” French says.

The situation escalates from there. The unidentified man runs into the desert, picks up a rock and throws it at the trooper’s head as French pursues with his Taser drawn, yelling “I will tase you dude … get on the ground or I’m going to tase you!”

French deployed his Taser twice on the man with little effect. Without anyone being seriously injured, the video shows the pedestrian as he is handcuffed and pushed to the ground. The man is heard on the video acknowledging he threw a rock at the trooper, but also is heard saying “I was just trying to distract you pal” and that he just wanted to be left alone to walk along the interstate.

The pedestrian who French arrested was initially labeled a “John Doe.” He gave the trooper three different names: Conner Jack, Conner Stray and Conner Oswalt with two different birthdates. Authorities could not immediately verify his identity.

The “John Doe” was booked at the Clark County Detention Center on charges of assault on protected person and attempted battery.

He was later charged under the name “Conner Oswald,” according to Goodsprings Justice Court records. It was clear the young man had either mental health issues or a developmental disorder immediately, so he was sent to a mental health facility for a competency examination.

He ended up pleading no contest to two misdemeanor counts of assault in Goodsprings, which is about 40 miles southwest of Las Vegas. A no contest plea is not an admission of guilt but acknowledges a guilty verdict is likely if the case were to go to trial.

“Conner Oswald” was ordered to pay a $500 fine or complete 50 hours of community service with a suspended six-month jail sentence and released. He lost touch with the courts and a bench warrant for the arrest of “Conner Oswald” was issued Feb. 22.

A rescue in the mountains of Utah

Despite the missing persons report on file about Oswalt, Nevada authorities never realized that the John Doe, later charged as “Conner Oswald,” was actually Connerjack Oswalt. This is because when he was reported missing, his fingerprints were never entered into a police database that is checked whenever a John Doe is booked at the jail in Las Vegas, police said.

The mystery would finally be solved just after 5 a.m. on April 9, when deputies with the Summit County Sheriff’s Office in Utah found an unidentified man shivering in front of a convenience store in the Park City area. Sheriff’s Lt. Andrew Wright said deputies persuaded the man to get into their patrol car.

They obtained his fingerprint and got a hit for the man. He was wanted out of Goodsprings as “Conner Oswald.” An alert dispatcher then searched through online missing persons reports, recognized the similarity between the name and Oswalt’s, and authorities quickly confirmed “Oswald” was Connerjack Oswalt.

His parents would end up reuniting with their child in a touching affair that generated national media attention.

“I never stopped looking for him. There wasn’t a day I wasn’t searching for him, in some form or fashion,” his mother, Suzanne Flint, told the AP.

This past week, Wright said they don’t know where Oswalt is now and his family, who could not immediately be reached for comment, have offered no public updates.

“Unfortunately, we never heard any more about how Connerjack is doing or where he ended up,” Wright said Thursday. “We do hope he is well with his family.”

Stopping pedestrians along the interstate

Nevada law dictates that it is illegal to walk along an interstate like I-15 as Oswalt was doing when French stopped him, meaning the stop of Oswalt was justified.

“Every situation can be very different; troopers would need to discern if the individual is in a situation where they might cause harm to themselves or to the motoring public, if the individual is in distress, or if they are commuting on foot,” Nevada State Police spokeswoman Kim Smith said. “The safety of the individual and public is a priority for the trooper in managing these types of incidents.”

Smith said the Highway Patrol offers extensive training to troopers when it comes to encountering individuals who have mental illness or, in the case of Oswalt, a developmental disorder like autism.

“The trooper, along with all troopers and officers within the agency, attend continuing education classes each year,” Smith said. “These classes include mental illness awareness, crisis intervention training and post-traumatic stress disorder, among others. The department continuously looks for updated training opportunities for law enforcement officers.”

Smith said the department commonly conducts reviews of use-of-force incidents like the one involving Oswalt. The results of the review in the tasering of Oswalt are confidential, she said.

Smith said French was unavailable for an interview.

Contact Glenn Puit at gpuit@reviewjournal.com. Follow @GlennatRJ on Twitter.