Test Rules Out Man Who Said He Might Be Missing Michigan Boy
LIVONIA, Mich. (AP) — A DNA sample from a man hasn't solved the disappearance of a 4-year-old boy at a suburban Detroit shopping mall nearly 30 years ago, police said.
A test has ruled out a man who stepped forward in 2019 and said he could be D'Wan Sims, Livonia police said Wednesday.
D'Wan's mother told investigators they were shopping at Wonderland Mall in Livonia when he disappeared, two weeks before Christmas in 1994. Surveillance video, however, showed the Detroit woman inside the mall but not her son, police said.
Dwanna Wiggins moved to Durham, North Carolina, where she died last December.
"Our hope is he's alive," Capt. Tom Goralski said. "But the reality of it is we have to consider all options. If anyone has any information on either his whereabouts or what really happened back then, we want to hear it."
In 1994, hundreds of tips poured in as state police and the FBI joined the investigation. Dogs, horses and all-terrain vehicles were used to search for D'Wan.
"I can tell you that not one person who worked on that investigation believed her story," former Livonia police Chief Robert Stevenson said last year.
© 2021 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.