Jacob Erwin Wetterling is a boy from St. Joseph

St. Joseph, Minnesota

As of the census of 2000, there were 4,681 people, 1,120 households, and 712 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,517.4 people per square mile . There were 1,147 housing units at an average density of 616.8 per square mile...

, Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

 who was kidnapped

Kidnapping

In criminal law, kidnapping is the taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority...

 from his hometown at the age of 11 on Sunday, October 22, 1989. His fate remains unknown.
Jacob, his brother, and a friend were cycling home from a convenience store

Convenience store

A convenience store, corner store, corner shop, commonly called a bodega in Spanish-speaking areas of the United States, is a small store or shop in a built up area that stocks a range of everyday items such as groceries, toiletries, alcoholic and soft drinks, and may also offer money order and...

 on October 22nd 1989 (http://www.jwrc.org/WhoWeAre/History/tabid/128/Default.aspx) when a masked gunman came out of a driveway and ordered the boys to throw their bikes into a ditch and lie down on the ground.