DES MOINES, Iowa — A lot of digital detective work went into finding out what happened to 18 year old Abdi Sharif.
With the help of the FBI and video from DART, police tell us they were able to use the phone to put together a timeline of Sharif's actions after leaving the Target near Merle Hay Mall earlier this year.
What they discovered led them to conclude he either fell or jumped into the Des Moines River.
"When you're pinging off a tower, it gives you a pretty big triangle of where somebody may be," Sgt. Paul Parizek of the Des Moines Police Department said. "What the FBI's data was able to do was give us very specific pinpoints, so what that did was take that triangle and flatten it so we were able to very specifically see where he was and when he was there."
"That was critical to the case, very critical"