FLAGSTAFF — The Coconino County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit has solved the missing persons case of Brian Nez. Nez, a 19-year-old Native American male from Flagstaff, had been reported missing by his family on October 25, 1994.

The information from the initial investigation found that Nez was believed to have last been seen at a party in Winslow, AZ in August or September of 1994. The case went cold after several people were interviewed and no information developed as to his whereabouts. Nez was entered as missing in the national computer database used by law enforcement.

In Spring 2015, the Coconino County Sheriff’s Cold Case Unit brought on volunteer Jana White, retired from NAU Police and Flagstaff Police Departments, to review unsolved missing person cases. Nez’s case was re-opened in March 2016. Investigator Jana White entered Nez into a new database called NamUS (http://namus.gov/about.htm), a website that has developed largely over the last ten years to improve information sharing on missing and unidentified persons throughout the United States. NamUS responded with information that an unidentified victim of a fatal vehicle-pedestrian traffic accident had a similar description to our missing person case. The vehicle-pedestrian accident had occurred in Navajo County about 2 miles north of Winslow, AZ in August 1994. Based on this, further investigation by the Cold Case Unit found that the Coconino County Medical Examiner’s Office had performed the autopsy on the unidentified pedestrian victim for Navajo County.
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