Five years after teen's death, family searches for his prized electric guitar

Nearly five years after a dirt bike crash killed a 13-year-old boy in Indiana, his family launched a search to track down one of his prized possessions: an Epiphone Les Paul standard electric guitar.

Relatives in Columbus said they asked a friend to hold on to three guitars for safe-keeping, but he sold one of them to a pawn shop last year. A family friend offered a $1,000 reward, Fox 59 reported.

The teenager, Mark Allen Cain, loved bikes and guitars, his family said. He died in November 2011, just two days after he turned 13.

His father, Seth, said the family kept his guitars until they started looking for a new home about two years ago. He took up a friend's offer to store the guitars, saying they might be better protected from mold or mice if they stayed out of a public storage facility.

However, when relatives said they wanted to retrieve the guitars, they learned the painful news: The friend had sold one of them to the Columbus Pawn Shop in October 2015.

"I've contacted along with friends and family every pawn/guitar shop in the area with no luck. Tried filing a police report and was told it happened to long ago and it was probably gone forever," Seth Cain told WTHR, saying his son bought the instrument himself. "He had his eyes on this guitar for a couple years. He was proud he bought it."

Columbus is about 45 miles southeast of Indianapolis.

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