Featured Image Credit: NCMEC/Marshall Independent/Public Domain
Topics: US News
Callum Jones
The final words of a 19-year-old man who was on the phone with his dad before going missing are extremely chilling.
Back in May 2008, student Brandon Swanson had been travelling home to his parents' house in Minnesota after celebrating the end of spring semester with his pals.
While he had the option to stay at a friend's house, Brandon ultimately decided to make the long drive back home to his hometown of Marshall.
But he wouldn't have been fazed by that considering he made the commute regularly for his studies, however the student would not return home on this occasion.
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Around 2am on May 14, Brandon phoned his parents to inform them he had crashed his car into a ditch and could not get out.
He went on to say he was uninjured by the accident, asking his parents if they could come and pick him up.
But as Brandon was in the middle of nowhere, his mom and dad were unable to location him, so the teen walked towards some lights which he believed to be a nearby town.
The plan was that Brandon's parents would pick him up from there.
Brandon began the walk while still on the phone to his parents, but just moments later he would chillingly exclaim the words 'oh s**t' before the line went quiet.
The teen's parents immediately ran their son back, but it went straight to voicemail - that would be the story of the night.
Annette, Brandon's mother, reported him missing to police in the nearby town of Lynd at approximately 6.30am the next morning.
Authorities discovered from cell phone records that the teen wasn't in his originally assumed location of Lynd, but instead 40km away in the opposite direction.
Lyon County Sheriff Eric Wallen, as per Grand Forks Herald, said: "We were able to use the cellphone tower technology to have an idea of where his last communications or phone calls came from, so that put us on a cell tower up in that area.
"So then the search was focused there, and the car was located."
A massive search then began for Brandon, including the use of sniffer dogs along the Yellow Medicine River.
Local authorities have long theorized Brandon may have fallen into the river, though no trace of the teenager has ever been found.
In fact, police never even discovered any of his personal belongings, leaving the chilling case unsolved to this day.