Authorities say a teen boy in Kentucky on Wednesday claimed to have just escaped from two kidnappers and identified himself as a child who went missing almost eight years ago in Illinois.

Timmothy Pitzen was 6 years old when he disappeared in 2011, and family members continued to believe he was alive and ask for any information that could lead to his whereabouts.

"I know that he’s out there," his aunt Kara Jacobs told the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children last year. "We just have to find him."

On Wednesday, authorities said someone claiming to be 14 said he was Timmothy Pitzen and that he'd escaped from two men who had been keeping him in captivity, according to a police report. The teen was spotted in a Newport, Kentucky, neighborhood by residents who called police, a Cincinnati Fox affiliate reported. Neighbors at first thought he looked suspicious, then realized he was bruised and appeared scared, they told the station.