A man claims he is D’Wan Sims, a Detroit boy who went missing from a mall while Christmas shopping with his mother in 1994. D’Wan would now be 29 years old.
D’Wan’s mother, Dwanna Harris, told police her son went missing while she was shopping with him at the Wonderland Mall in Livonia on Dec. 11, 1994.
Detroit police reviewed surveillance video from the mall at the time Harris claimed her son went missing. There were no sightings of D’Wan with his mother, leading police to believe D’Wan was never in the mall.
“I was here at the department and we looked at all of the video, we checked everything, and we never saw D’Wan with his mother,” Taig told Detroit 4 News.
Sgt. Shelley Holloway told The Detroit Free Press in 2009 that investigators were “pretty confident D’Wan never made it to the Wonderland Mall.”
Now a man on Facebook claims to be D’Wan. Detroit police were alerted to the man’s Facebook post in which he claims he is the missing boy. Dailymail.com identified the man as Mike Cash.
Cash shared a baby photo of himself on Facebook, saying his baby picture bares a close resemblance to D’Wan when he was 4.
But Internet users wondered how a man who was 4 when he went missing has a baby photo of himself.
Cash contacted the Detroit police who obtained a sample of his DNA. Police are skeptical of his story after he said he didn’t want his information released to the news media.
“I guess 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 had put this out on social media,” Livonia police Capt. Ron Taig told Detroit 4 News.
Cash spoke with Harris on Facebook, but he said she blocked him. He also asked her to meet with him at the Detroit police station, but she said she was not comfortable with that.
“She did contact and talk to this person and ask him about some personal information that only her and D’Wan Sims would know, like birthmarks,” Taig said. “He wasn’t able to answer those questions, along with the date of birth.”
Cash complained in a Facebook post, saying Harris blocked him. “I need a f****** lawyer man,” he wrote.
In a 1994 press conference, Harris complained she was being treated unfairly and compared to the Susan Smith case.
Smith is a South Carolina woman who claimed her 2 sons were kidnapped by a Black male during a carjacking. Smith later confessed to drowning her sons in a lake. She is now 48 and serving life in prison.
The Detroit Free Press reported in 2009 that Harris changed her name and moved to South Carolina.
D’Wan is still listed as missing on the National Center of Missing & Exploited Children website.
