A dark-haired teen or young man pulled from Sweetwater Reservoir in January 1999 still has no name, but San Diego County investigators now have a new face to show the public. The county Medical Examiner's Office has released a forensic sketch of the young man, hoping someone out there finally recognizes him nearly three decades later.
According to the San Diego County
X account, the push covers several children and young adults whose cases have gone unsolved for decades, and the county is urging anyone with information to contact investigators and reference the case number tied to each sketch. The office posted the appeal alongside forensic sketches of multiple unidentified youths, asking the public: do you recognize any of these faces?
The county continues to seek names for these long-unidentified young people.
A Tattoo That Might Hold the Key
The 1999 case is the one with the most distinctive physical clue. The young man's body was found in the Sweetwater Reservoir on January 2, 1999, and investigators estimate he had been in the water for only one to two days before he was discovered, according to the county. He was likely 17 to 22 years old, and investigators believe he was possibly Asian, American Indian or Alaska Native.
What sets this case apart is the ink on his skin. His left shoulder featured a large tattoo showing a banner with the word “WICCA,” a bird in flight shaped like a “V,” an ankh symbol and a pentagram, the county reports. The county's appeal includes forensic sketches, and a distinctive tattoo like that might jog someone's memory even after all these years.
Four More Unsolved Cases Stretch Back to the 1970s
The reservoir case is just one of five the county is highlighting. The others stretch back even further, including a girl estimated to be 14 to 18 years old found on February 14, 1978, near “Proctor Valley Road,” as spelled on a case poster from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which describes the remains as those of an unidentified female found next to the pavement.
Also among the cases: a boy estimated to be 12 to 16 years old found on the Imperial Beach shoreline on July 22, 1979, and a Hispanic teen estimated at 15 to 16 years old discovered near the Tijuana River on March 16, 1995, the county says. The fifth case involves a toddler boy found May 4, 2004, in a wooded area of Rancho Bernardo.
Another Unidentified-Person Case
The county has also handled other unidentified-person cases. In 2022, a woman drowned in the Tijuana River that April; the case number was 2022-01456.
Anyone with information about any of the five unidentified young people is asked to contact investigators and reference the case number associated with the specific sketch. For a 27-year-old case built around a single memorable tattoo, and for four others that have waited even longer, that information could finally give a family some answers.
