An American college student, who went missing eight days ago during a vacation in Japan, has been found dead, his heartbroken family revealed Saturday.
James “Weston” Higginbotham, a 20-year-old Auburn University student in Auburn, Alabama, went missing on May 29 while traveling in Japan with his parents and younger brother to celebrate his sibling’s high school graduation. Weston did not join his family on a temple visit in Kyoto, instead staying behind at their hotel after lunch and planning to explore the city on his own. An experienced hiker, Weston Higginbotham was last seen on CCTV around 8 p.m. walking alone in Kyoto’s Yamashina area, near the border with Shiga prefecture, just before a storm moved in.
“Our family is heartbroken to share that Weston was found deceased by a volunteer search-and-rescue group in a mountainous area outside of Kyoto,” his mother, Nancy Higginbotham, wrote in a Facebook post Saturday. “The grief we feel is impossible to put into words. We are forever grateful for the time we had with our sweet, precious Weston, but cannot begin to understand what life without him will be like.”
Nancy Higginbotham told CBS News Friday that the pair had argued about the use of ChatGPT on the trip, which had become “a sore subject” with her son, an environmental engineering student.
“I was using a little bit too much ChatGPT. Japan is a country that I’ve had a hard time navigating,” Nancy Higginbotham told the outlet. “Weston is very anti-AI because, you know, he’s into sustainability engineering, and AI uses a lot of water and is depleting a lot of water resources.”
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open image in galleryLater on the evening of May 29 that night, Weston Higginbotham’s parents saw through Life360, a GPS tracking app, that his phone was still moving around the city and sent him text messages, but he never responded.
The last known footage of him shows Weston Higginbotham walking alone in the Yamashina area around 8 p.m., on the border of Kyoto and Shiga prefectures, just before a storm moved in. The mountainous, heavily forested region includes hiking trails, and a camera captured him on a path leading into the area.
“My fear is that he, that he got hurt and that he’s stuck,” Nancy Higginbotham told CBS News. “My fear is that he doesn’t have enough food because there is plenty of water, and that he’s lost. Those mountains, that forest goes for a very long time and … it’s extremely dense.”
Search teams had concentrated their efforts in the forests of Yamashina, but the active search has since been suspended, according to the family. High winds and heavy rain in the region hampered search operations, authorities said.
“They said they’ve concluded their search of the area that they committed to and they conducted a very thorough search over three days to include 100 police officers, K9 dogs, the helicopters, and they did not find him,” Nancy Higginbotham said.
The family planned to hire a private Japanese search-and-rescue team, which would cost them over $100,000, and said they would not leave Japan until Weston was found.
“We have complete confidence that we are going to find him,” Weston’s dad, Keith Higginbotham, told CBS News.