Beaufort, Mo. – The phone hasn’t stopped ringing for days, so forgive Sheri Hults for not immediately recognizing the name: Matt Blunt.
She assumed it was another reporter looking to talk to her son, Mitchell, who has been hailed as a national hero for his role in helping find two missing boys, so she decided to fib. No, Mitchell is not here, she said.
Moments later, she realized what she had done.
The governor of Missouri on Monday wanted to chat with the 15-year-old from rural Franklin County.
Before his name was broadcast across the nation, friends say, Mitchell Hults was just another boy who likes to hunt, dreams of becoming a farmer and loves pickups.
“He talks about them all the time,” said his friend Kylie Kutz, 14. “He’s obsessed with them.”
It’s little wonder, his friends say, that he was able to describe a pickup in vivid detail at the time of 13-year-old William “Ben” Ownby’s disappearance.
Mitchell was on the same school bus as Ben.
After getting off and starting to head home, Mitchell saw the truck speed away moments after Ben had stepped off the bus.
“That didn’t surprise me at all that he noticed things like that,” said Jerry Eckstein, a friend who has known Mitchell since kindergarten.
Even though he spotted the truck for only a few seconds, Mitchell’s description was on the money: the rust marks, the dents, the Missouri plates, the camper shell, the “Nissan” lettering on the back – all of which helped a neighbor of Michael J. Devlin’s and Kirkwood, Mo., police realize that Devlin was the suspect in Ben’s abduction.
Police also found Shawn Hornbeck, missing for more than four years, in Devlin’s Kirkwood apartment.
In the five-day search for Ben, Mitchell’s description was the only clue police had.
They repeated it at news conferences, urging anyone with information to call. It was the clue that helped crack the case.
But for the first couple of days, the attention wasn’t all positive. Some wondered how Mitchell could have such a detailed description of the truck. Was there more to his story? Police helped dispel the speculation when they announced that Mitchell had passed a polygraph test.
“I feel good about that,” Mitchell said, though not too fazed by questions about his credibility.
Now, a radio station is giving him $1,000 as a reward, Blunt is looking to congratulate him, law enforcement officers keep praising him and national news shows keep calling the house.
He has been called “eagle- eyed,” “quick-thinking” and “heroic.” Only days earlier, Mitchell was a quiet kid who blended in with the other freshmen at Union High School
Mitchell seems to be enjoying the media glare. He has honored countless interview requests, smiling on TV shows as he answers questions with his brief, plain-spoken style.
On Monday, he sat in his parents’ living room wearing a camouflage jacket and, of course, a baseball cap – this one adorned with fishhooks. He pointed to an eight-point buck mounted on the wall that he had shot with a rifle.
Then his mother accidentally snubbed the governor.
“He just said, ‘Matt Blunt,”‘ she said. “He didn’t say governor.” Mitchell shook his head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “No, you’re not,” he joked.
The governor would call back later to personally relay his congratulations.
So does Mitchell think all the attention is too much? “No, not yet,” he said, grinning.
