A 911 call revealed the moment dispatchers were told a teen calling himself Timmothy Pitzen approached a driver in Newport, Ky., Wednesday saying he had just escaped his captors, according to a report.

“He walked up to my car and he went, ‘Can you help me?'” a 911 caller told dispatchers, local station WCPO reported. “‘I just want to get home. Please help me.’ I asked him what’s going on, and he tells me he’s been kidnapped and he’s been traded through all these people and he just wanted to go home.”

Witnesses said the deeply bruised teen appeared anxious as he ran up to a passing car to seek refuge, and one reported the incident as possible car theft, according to news station WFIR.

When police arrived, the teen told them he was the long-missing Pitzen, who disappeared in 2011 after his mother apparently killed herself.

Investigators said they believe his mother, Amy Fry-Pitzen, picked up her son early from school the day he disappeared. She reportedly took him to a zoo, then a Wisconsin water park before she was found dead with her wrists slit in a Rockford, Illinois, hotel.

The teen said Wednesday he “kept running away across a bridge” from two kidnappers, who he claimed held him captive in a Red Roof Inn in suburban Ohio.

The teen was brought Wednesday to a hospital, and no information on his condition was released.

Pitzen’s family said they are expecting DNA test results Thursday to confirm whether the wandering teen is who he claims to be.

With wires