Mississippi dig may have found bones of missing Maryland man

Published 2:47 pm Monday, June 3, 2019

(AP) — Investigators in southwest Mississippi say they may have found human remains in the search for a Maryland college student who disappeared in May 1995.

District attorney’s investigator Truett Simmons tells the Enterprise-Journal that archeologists found a “high probability of human bone” on Thursday. Simmons says it appears to be charred bone fragments, possibly belonging to 19-year-old Donald Lee Izzett Jr.

It’s the third dig at the Fernwood site, where a witness told investigators that the Cumberland, Maryland, teen was shot three times and his body burned.

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No one has been arrested, but this month Izzett’s estate filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Shane Guenther, formerly of Fernwood and now of Bremerton, Washington.

Simmons says prosecutors are more likely to file criminal charges if remains have been found.