After 11 years with amnesia, this man finally discovered his real identity
In 2004, Florida resident Benjamin Kyle was found beaten and naked and left for dead near a dumpster outside of a Savannah area Burger King. It was later discovered that his injuries had caused retrograde amnesia in Kyle, and so he has spent the past decade having no idea who he was before his attack.
“Sometimes, the last ten years has been just hell,” Kyle explained to News4Jax. “I think initially I was just stunned, literally stunned. I was not functioning. I couldn’t even talk about it.I never really talked about the bad times. And there were some bad times. I never talked to people about it because I never thought I had the right to impose my problems on them. I don’t know. Ten years ago, if I had known I’d have to go through the past ten years, I’d have just made up a Social Security number in the hospital.”
Kyle has worked with genealogist CeCe Moore and her team for the past two and a half years to try to figure out his identity through a DNA search. The team recently found a match (AKA a blood relative), and this led to the team being able to determine Kyle’s true identity and find his family in Indiana.
“Evidently, I left Indiana in ’76 and they have not seen me since then,” Kyle said. “Of course we haven’t been in communication. They thought I was dead.”
Rediscovering his family has been a revelatory experience for Kyle.
“Looking at all these names, all these people, kind of gives me a sense of belonging,” he said. “I have a history. I’m not just some stranger that materialized out of thin air.”
We are so glad that 11 years later, Kyle has finally discovered who he really is, and is going to be reunited with his family.
Related:
How a grown woman woke up and thought she was a teenager
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