Google helps ID deceased

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MOXEE, Wash. (AP) -- Google.com, the Internet search engine, has done something that law enforcement officials and their computer tools could not: identify a man who died in an apparent hit-and-run accident 11 years ago in this small town outside Yakima.

Detective Pat Ditter of the Washington State Patrol searched Google for about a week before identifying the man as David Glen Lewis, 39, who died 1,606 miles from his home in Amarillo, Texas.

The dead man had no known ties to central Washington, and his presence in the area remains a mystery, Detective Ditter said. Relatives think Mr. Lewis was kidnapped.

Detective Ditter said he turned to Google after reading a series of newspaper stories about long-unsolved missing-person cases. After a week, he was focusing on about a dozen cases.

Finally, he came across a distinctive pair of glasses in a photograph on the Web site of the Texas Department of Public Safety. On Oct. 4, officials at a laboratory in Texas confirmed a DNA match between the long unidentified pedestrian and Mr. Lewis' mother.