Desperate search for missing 19-year-old in Box Elder
Jun 3, 2022, 6:17 AM | Updated: Jun 16, 2022, 10:26 pm
BOX ELDER COUNTY, UTAH – A mother is growing increasingly desperate for answers in the search for her 19-year-old son as search and rescue crews ramp up their efforts to find the teen who went missing in a small town in Box Elder County last week.
Dylan Rounds, 19, is originally from eastern Idaho but has spent the last three years off and on living in Lucin, Utah, near the Nevada border.
“He just vanished,” said Dylan’s mom Candice Cooley. “And somebody, somewhere out there knows something.”
Cooley says the family is offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to her son. She says he is a farmer, who often travels to the 600 plus-acre family property in Lucin by himself, spending all his time and energy working the land to produce crops.
Cooley said he was last seen on May 25 and last heard from on Saturday May 28 when he called his grandma early in the morning. He told her he would call her back later that day but never did.
The family got worried when no one had heard from him and on Monday they notified the Box Elder Sheriff’s office that he was missing. She said the last few days have been “torture”.
Cooley said she and other family members are in Lucin, searching the area in side-by-sides, talking to locals, desperately looking for information that may lead them to Dylan.
“We know something happened,” Cooley said.
“Dylan did not go somewhere. And Dylan did not leave this place willingly, we have come to the conclusion. His pick-up [truck] is here. All his belongings. Everything. It’s like he just vanished.”
Cooley said some have suggested he may have run off. But she said that’s not in his character and she suspects foul play.
Chief Deputy Cade Palmer with the Box Elder County Sheriff’s Office told KSL they were notified Dylan was missing on Monday. Volunteer search and rescue crews searched the area around his home on Monday and Tuesday.
Palmer said detectives followed up on leads on Wednesday and Thursday but came away without any new direction on his whereabouts. He says there is no evidence of foul play at this point, adding that the only thing suspicious is that—after four days—they have no new information.
Palmer said crews would be ramping up their search again on Friday, with assistance from the Utah Department of Public Safety helicopter.
If you have any information about this missing person’s case, you can contact the Box Elder Sheriff’s Office.
