Man gives DNA to find out if he's Detroit boy missing since 1994
DETROIT — Four-year-old D'Wan Sims vanished in 1994. He was never heard from again.
Now, 25 years later, a man believes he could be that little boy from Detroit.
Capt. Ronald Taig of the Livonia Police Department told WDIV that a local man came in a couple of days ago to give a DNA sample to find out whether he was D'Wan.
Livonia police said they first heard about the incident when a man posted on social media that he believed he was Sims.
According to a Facebook post, the man questioned what he was told about his childhood. He starting having doubts about his identity when he learned his father was not his real father.
"What's odd is that he claimed that he didn’t want any of this information out in the media and from what I understand, he has put this out on social media,” Taig said. “We are going to reach out, obviously, to the family and provide his information, to see if they want to contact him."
Taig was at the department when Sims was reported missing from a Livonia mall in December 1994. “I was here at the department and we looked at all of the video, we checked everything, and we never saw D’Wan with Ms. Sims.”
Because the tapes never showed signs of the child ever being there, Harris became a suspect in the case.
She maintained her innocence and claimed in a 1994 press conference that she was being treated unfairly due to the Susan Smith case at the time, where a woman reported that her children were kidnapped in a carjacking. Smith admitted nine days later to drowning them in a lake.
According to WDIV, police reached out to the mother to get a DNA sample. They aren't sure whether she will cooperate.
Related: Elizabeth Smart, Other Abducted Children Found Alive
Follow Bisma Parvez on Twitter @bismapar
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: D'Wan Sims case: Man thinks he may be missing Detroit boy, gives DNA
