D'Wan Sims, 4, was reported missing from Michigan mall Dec. 11, 1994. 30 years on, the case remains unsolved.
(CBS DETROIT) - D'Wan Sims was 4 years old when his mother, D'Wanna Wiggins, reported him missing from the Wonderland Mall in Livonia. Thirty years later, the case remains unsolved.
Wiggins, who went by Harris at the time, told police on Dec. 11, 1994, that her son disappeared while they were shopping. Surveillance video, however, showed the Detroit mother inside the mall but there were no images of D'Wan.
Wiggins moved to Durham, North Carolina, where she died on Dec. 7, 2020.
D'Wan is still listed as missing on the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children website. He was last seen wearing a blue winter jacket over a multi-colored windbreaker, dark blue sweat pants and low-top "FILA" brand shoes.
"If D'Wan is out there somewhere, I would say your memory is not forgotten. That day's not forgotten," said Livonia Police Capt. Greg Yon.
Police captain says he never forgot about D'Wan Sims
Yon, who has been a member of the Livonia Police Department for 38 years, was a police officer in 1994 when he and a group of officers were assigned to search communities surrounding the mall, including Rouge Park in Detroit and D'Wan's neighborhood.
On Wednesday, the now captain says he will never forget the case.
"I think about it because of all of the manpower that we had invested in searching for him, the investigation that took place subsequently that eventually, we realized he had never entered that mall," Yon told CBS News Detroit on Wednesday.
Yon says although police have not yet uncovered what happened to the child, he wonders what D'Wan would be doing today as a 34-year-old man.
"The hopes are that maybe he is alive somewhere and didn't know that he was abandoned or anything else that may have taken place ... The other end of that is potentially a life that was never lived," Yon said.
Yon says there are still a few officers on the force who were assigned the case in 1994, and they still talk about it. He says the case shaped him personally and as an officer.
"As a young man back then and a parent of young children at the time, you think about your own family and your own kids, and the other people that are victimized by kidnappings and instantaneous tragedies with their children. It weighs on you all the time as a parent," he said. "When you see it on a basis like we do where things can change in a moment and it definitely weighs on your heart."
Man claims to be D'Wan Sims but DNA testing proved otherwise
In 2019, a man came forward and claimed that he could be D'Wan. However, DNA testing ruled that possibility out.
At the time, Wiggins told The Associated Press that someone tagged her in Facebook posts in which the man said he believed he was D'Wan. She said he told her he was trying to find his birth family.
"I reached out to him. We had conversations via Facebook," Wiggins told The AP in 2019. "I reached out to him once the story went viral on Facebook. I was trying to be compassionate to him and his story. This is still an investigation. It's not a joke."
Yon says they were hopeful the case would be solved then but also acknowledged the possibility that the man was not D'Wan.
"When somebody comes forward, and they think they're the person, there's a lot of things that cross your mind. Are they trying to gain some publicity or do they truly believe that they are the individual? In this case, it seems as though he thought that he may be D'Wan based on his past that he knew very little of. The hopes are that absolutely that it would be him, but unfortunately, turned out not to be," Yon said.
Where does D'Wan's case stand now?
The case remains open and Yon encourages anyone who knows something to come forward.
"This is something that nobody should have to keep quiet about, and we would hope that if they do know something that they would contact us and give us viable leads so we can at least solve this not only for D'Wan but for his family members," he said.
Anyone with information on the case is asked to call Livonia police at 734-466-2470.