- DNA testing confirms foot bone found at Fish Lake is missing fisherman David White.
- White disappeared in 1997, leaving an empty boat, a hat and a shoe on the lake.
- Sevier County Sheriff's Office expressed relief for closure; White's daughter thanked search efforts.
RICHFIELD — DNA testing has confirmed a human foot bone found near the lake in May belongs to a fisherman who went missing at the lake in 1997.
The bone and the shoe in which it was found belong to David White, a 44-year-old man from Washington city, Washington County, the Sevier County Sheriff's Office announced Tuesday.
White had planned to go fishing on the lake with his friends in late August 1997, a news release from the sheriff's office says, and when those plans fell through, White went fishing anyway. White's empty boat was later found skimming across the lake, along with a shoe and a hat floating in the water, leading investigators to believe he had fallen in.
A search and rescue team spent days looking for White but was unable to find him.
On May 16 of this year, a man was walking his dog along the Fish Lake shoreline when the pet found a shoe with a bone inside. The man contacted the sheriff's office, and deputies took the items to the state's Office of the Medical Examiner.
"Investigators were able to determine the hiking boot was only made in 1996 for one year," the release says. Based on that information, they matched the timing up to White's disappearance.
"On advice from the medical examiner, DNA was collected from the bone and compared with DNA from one of White's daughters. Testing showed "99.9994% certainty the DNA samples were related, one being the paternal parent of the other," the release says.
"This case has been on the mind of every one of the (search and rescue) members who were involved in the search 28 years ago," said Sevier County Sheriff Nathan J. Curtis. "It is good to finally have some closure for the family and the searchers."
Stephanie White, David White's daughter, thanked those involved in the search and rescue process, as well as the man who found the foot last May.
"We are also deeply grateful to the individual and his dog who found the shoe – without them, we would not be where we are today," she said.
