On May 13, 2008, 19-year-old student Brandon Swenson finished his freshman year at Minnesota College. That same evening, Brandon and his friends threw a party at a house in Canby City.
There were alcoholic beverages at the party, as Brandon’s friends later said he drank one shot of whiskey. And deep into the night of May 14, Brandon left the party, the guy got into his car and drove to the town of Marshall, which was a 30-mile drive from Canby.
Around 1:15 a.m., Brandon’s car got stuck in a ditch, and the guy tried to call his friends, but no one answered him. At about 2:00 a.m., Brandon called his parents to let them know he was stuck in a ditch and said he would wait for his parents in the car.
However, when Brian and Annette Swenson got to where their son was stuck, they did not find the car or Brandon.
Brandon disappeared right in the middle of a conversation with his father.
Brian said that, while talking to his son while he was looking for a trail where his parents might be, Brandon told him that he had seen flashes in the distance thinking they were lights from the nearby town of Lynde.
Brian was in touch with his son for 47 minutes, but then Brendon screamed: “Oh, shit!” And the connection was abruptly cut off. Brian tried several times to call his son back, but no one answered. So the parents began searching the highway where Brandon was supposedly stuck, but unfortunately they couldn’t find Brandon or the car.
At 6:30 a.m. they filed a missing son report with the police, at which point a search for the missing boy was organized.
The search
And around 12:00 p.m. his Chevrolet Lumina was found in a ditch on the border of Lincoln and Yellow Medicine. For several months police, search dogs and volunteers searched the area around the car, looking into bodies of water, but could not find the missing person.
Theories
CSI put forward a theory that the guy might have fallen into one of the bodies of water, drowning his phone. When he got out of the pond, he could have died that night from hypothermia because the temperature that night dropped to zero Celsius.
And the body was not found because, it could be in any 122 square mile area.
There was also this crazy theory that the guy planned his disappearance. And that he changed his name and now lives in another state. But this theory is unlikely because the guy simply had no motive to disappear. Also, when he got stuck, he called everyone close to him, which means he really wanted to be found and helped.
Stranger
Nor did anyone rule out the possibility that the guy might have met a dangerous stranger walking around in the night. Of course, there was no evidence to support that theory, but the police hadn’t ruled out the possibility that it might have happened to the boy.
Thirteen years after his disappearance, the mystery of Brandon Swenson is still unsolved. And we are left to wonder what happened to the boy that fateful night. What do you think?