x
Breaking News
More () »

Vigil marks two years since DeOrr Kunz Jr. disappeared

Dozens of people came out to the vigil at Freeman Park, showing their support for DeOrr, who today would be 4 years old.

IDAHO FALLS - It's been exactly two years since eastern Idaho toddler DeOrr Kunz Jr. disappeared - and on Monday night, some members of his community gathered for a vigil in Idaho Falls in his honor.

It's a mystery what happened to the then-2-year-old, who was reported missing while camping near Leadore.

But investigators and family are still searching for answers, clues and closure.

MORE: DeOrr Kunz's family still searching, two years later

Dozens of people came out to the vigil at Freeman Park, showing their support for DeOrr, who today would be 4 years old.

KTVB spoke with his family as they continue searching for missing DeOrr and pass out updated flyers with an age progressions sketch to raise awareness.

Meanwhile, the high-profile case continues to baffle the nation.

"We want to be here to help in the prayer to help find little man and a burn a candle for him and wish him our best," DeOrr's great-grandfather, Richard Jimenez, said.

Sending up prayers and hope, the community gathered to remember DeOrr, releasing balloons with touching messages and lighting candles in his honor- all in an effort to bring DeOrr Kunz Jr. home.

"You see people gather like they do it's overwhelming because I can't tell those people how much it means...," the boy's mother, Jessica Mitchell, said. "I'm lost. We have no answers, no leads, no direction to go in, still two years later."

Mitchell says she's hopeful little DeOrr is still alive, out there in the mountains near the Timber Creek campsite where she and DeOrr's father, Vernal DeOrr Kunz, reported the toddler went missing.

But she says she's accepted she might not get to bring him home.

"Something happens in the blink of an eye. You never know what could happen," DeOrr's mother said.

His loved ones say they are desperate to find out what happened on that fateful day exactly two years ago.

"Not having closure is what's hard," DeOrr Kunz Jr.'s grandmother and Mitchell's mother, Trina Clegg, said. "My only two thoughts are an animal, and every time I leave there and there's still nothing, it just goes back to I think someone has him."

"Somebody knows something but nobody is talking," Jimenez said.

"I just pray to God that whoever did something sooner or later comes up and says something so the boy can get a decent funeral."

"Any answers are better than what we have right now," Mitchell added, "If he is gone from us I want to have those answers and be able to have that closure and have a funeral if that's what it comes to."

DeOrr's father wasn't at the vigil, and Jessica says while they have different views about where DeOrr could be, they do communicate and have agreed to be in this together.

Search efforts are still active: the family was just up near the campsite this weekend looking in different areas.

And the Lemhi County sheriff led a search in the Timber Creek Reservoir last week - but still no trace of DeOrr.

"In my opinion, he could be anywhere," Clegg added.

No charges have been filed in the boy's disappearance, although authorities originally investigating this case believe he was killed.

All four people with DeOrr Kunz Jr at the campsite where he was reported missing are considered "uncleared people of interest" in the case.

Before You Leave, Check This Out