A 20-year-old American college student who vanished during a family vacation in Japan has been discovered deceased in the mountains outside Kyoto, according to his mother’s social media announcement on Saturday.
James Higginbotham’s body was located in a mountainous region by volunteer search-and-rescue teams, his mother Nancy Higginbotham revealed in her Facebook post.
Authorities have not yet released information about what caused his death or additional circumstances surrounding the discovery.
“Our family is heartbroken,” she wrote. “The grief we feel is impossible to put into words.”
Higginbotham, who lived in Alabama and studied engineering at Auburn University, was last spotted departing from a Kyoto train station on May 29. His cell phone stopped working and location tracking was disabled later that evening, his mother had previously shared with Reuters.
Nancy Higginbotham had been monitoring his whereabouts through the Life360 application until that point, she explained.
His family suspected he was traveling to a hiking trail in the area. Nancy Higginbotham had earlier told Reuters that she thought her son might have “needed space.”
The family had traveled to Japan to mark James Higginbotham’s younger brother’s high school graduation celebration.
Japanese law enforcement conducted an extensive three-day search operation involving approximately 100 officers, search dogs, and aircraft, but failed to locate any evidence of his whereabouts, according to CNN’s reporting.
