Skull found on San Bernardino County hiking trail decades ago identified as that of missing child

A skull found on a San Bernardino County hiking trail decades ago has been identified as that of a missing child, whose case has been reopened and is being investigated as a homicide, officials said.

The case began when Patricia Clark reported her son, Derrick Burton, missing to the San Bernardino Police Department in 1991, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department announced Thursday.

The boy, who was about 4 years old at the time, was never located.

But on the afternoon of Oct. 27, 1991, a hunter found a small human skull east of Redlands in rural Mentone, according to authorities. The skull was missing its lower jaw and teeth. Sheriff’s investigators searched the area for additional remains but none were found, authorities said.

Investigators did find a plastic bag with the odor of decomposition and a piece of child’s clothing, which were kept for evidence, but the remains could not be identified, sheriff’s officials said. A coroner performed an autopsy on Nov. 7, 1991, and determined the skull belonged to a child between the ages of 4 and 8, according to investigators.

The cause of death was undetermined, and without any additional leads the case went cold.

Then in the fall of 2022 DNA from the skull was sent to Othram Inc., a DNA sequencing and genomics lab, in hopes of identifying the child, the Sheriff’s Department said.

This year, after comparing DNA from the skull to a sample taken from Clark, the lab determined that the skull was Derrick‘s, sheriff’s officials said.

Anyone with information about the case can contact sheriff’s Det. Edward Hernandez at (909) 890-4904. Anonymous tips can be submitted at (800) 783-7463. or www.wetip.com.