In 2011, six-year-old Timmothy Pitzen’s mother picked him up at school in Illinois, took him to the zoo and a water park, and then killed herself at a hotel, leaving a note in which she said her son was fine but that no one would ever find him.

On Wednesday, a 14-year-old boy came forward to tell authorities he was Timmothy. The boy claimed he had escaped from two kidnappers in the Cincinnati area and then fled across a bridge from Ohio into Kentucky. Authorities from Timmothy’s home town of Aurora, Illinois, are now checking out the teenager’s story.

The authorities said on Thursday they were conducting DNA testing in hopes of determining whether the teenager who turned up is Pitzen. The FBI is investigating.

“We still have no confirmation of the identity of the person located, but hope to have something later this afternoon or early this evening,” police from Aurora said on Thursday morning.

Over the years, there have been several false sightings of the boy, and police and the boy’s family reacted cautiously to the latest development.

“There have been so many tips and sightings and whatnot, and you try not to panic or be overly excited,” said Timmothy’s grandmother, Alana Anderson. “Every day you hope, and every day you worry.”

The police were also being circumspect.

“We’ve probably had thousands of tips of him popping up in different areas,” said Sgt Bill Rowley, of Aurora police. “We have no idea what we’re driving down there for. It could be Pitzen. It could be a hoax.”

Police in the Cincinnati suburb of Sharonville wrote in a short incident report that the boy said on Wednesday morning he had “just escaped from two kidnappers”, whom he described as white men with bodybuilder-type physiques. They were in a Ford SUV with Wisconsin licence plates and had been staying at a Red Roof Inn.

Sharonville police said on the department’s Facebook page that the information about the boy’s reported escape was received by police in Campbell county, Kentucky.

“The City of Sharonville police department, like every other police agency in the greater Cincinnati area, was requested to check their Red Roof Inn hotels regarding this incident,” the post read. “To the best of our knowledge, we have no information indicating that the missing juvenile was ever in the City of Sharonville.”

The FBI said in its offices in Cincinnati and in Louisville, Kentucky, were working on a missing child investigation with Aurora police and police departments in Cincinnati and Newport, Kentucky, and the Hamilton county sheriff’s office in Ohio. The FBI offered no other details.

The body of 43-year-old Amy Fry-Pitzen was found at a hotel in Rockford, Illinois, on 15 May 2011. Police believe she killed herself after taking Timmothy to the zoo and a Wisconsin water park.

A note she left said Timmothy was fine but that no would find him. Police investigating her death said she took steps that suggested she may have dropped her son off with a friend. At the time, police searched for Timmothy in Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa.

In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.