The missing man found eight years after he disappeared thinks he's a 14-year-old boy called Julio Torres, his family have said.
Rudolph “Rudy” Farias IV went missing as a teenager in 2015 while taking his dogs for a walk. The alarm was raised after the dogs came home without him.
After years of possible sightings and unanswered questions, Rudy was found lying unconscious outside a church in Houston, Texas, and has been left unable to speak from his ordeal.
According to a social media post from his family he flinches from the slightest touch and thinks he is a 14-year-old called Julio Torres.
Despite this he has been reunited with his overjoyed family and is getting the help he needs.
Rudy was 17 years old when he was reported missing on March 6, 2015, after taking his two dogs for a walk near his family’s home in northeast Houston. The dogs were later found.
Houston police, along with Texas Equusearch, a civilian search and recovery team, looked for the boy but found no signs of him.
When he first went missing, Texas Equusearch reported that he suffered from depression and anxiety, and he might have been disoriented because he wasn’t taking his medication.
He also had asthma and walked with a slight limp because of an injured right leg.
Both his dad and his brother, who was his best friend, had recently died untimely deaths.
His dad, a Houston Police officer, committed suicide in 2014, aged 51. He shot himself in his police cruiser while still wearing his uniform in the wake of an internal affairs investigation over ticket rigging.
The older brother died in a motorcycle accident, with Rudy and his mum the first people to reach the scene.
Brenda Paradise, a private investigator, told Dateline in a 2015: "He's just had so much thrown at him the past few years."
She added: "He watched his best friend die right in front of him. His brother was his best friend in the world. He's just gone through so much more than anyone his age ever should."
“According to his mother he is very wary around strangers,” Texas Equusearch said in 2015.
Police spokesman John Cannon said the missing teenager's family did report to police investigators that they had seen him in September 2018, staying behind the home of a relative.
Police investigators followed up on the 2018 sighting and went to the relative’s home. But “they could not observe him. They could not locate him,” Mr Cannon said.
Since police were not able to find the missing man after the 2018 sighting, the investigation remained open as a missing person case, Cannon said.
Possible sightings like the one Houston police followed up in 2018 were common in the case, said Martin Renteria, a private investigator with Checkmate Investigative Field Services in suburban Houston who had been hired by the missing man's mother a few months after he went missing.
Mr Renteria recalled at least a dozen such reports that turned up nothing. Mr Renteria, who worked the case with his wife, Barbara, also followed up on possible sightings in other cities.
“After a couple of years ... we finally just had to give up on it,” Mr Renteria said Monday. He added he also considered that Rudy, who had become an adult in the time he was missing, might have run away and didn’t want to be found.
“What we do know is at the time of his recovery, a good Samaritan located him unresponsive and immediately called police and 911. My son Rudy is receiving the care he needs to overcome his trauma, but at this time, he is nonverbal and not able to communicate with us,” Janie Santana, Farias’ mother, said in a statement.
Ms Santana and other family members were not available for comment Monday.
“We are asking for privacy during this difficult time but will share more details as Rudy continues to heal,” Ms Santana said in her statement.
According to a post from the family, Rudy is spending much of his time curled in a fetal position in his hospital bed but his family is at his side.
"He flinches if you try to touch him or hug him, thinking we are going to strike him," the post said.
"He thinks his name is Julio Torres and he's 14. The doctors said not to correct him, to just go with it for now until he can begin to receive further treatment, to begin healing and recovery."
The post from the family added: "Rudy is in pretty bad shape.
"He has cuts, soft tissue tumours, small hole openings and swelling on the soles of his feet, along with bruising, old and new buts/scrapes on his body, old dry blood on his head and hair."
He's clearly "been through hell," the family post said. "God only knows what he has endured during his time away from home."
