A California woman who disappeared in late February in the Arizona desert after making a 911 call was found dead March 29, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Amanda Nenigar, 27, was reported missing by her family Feb. 28 after being unable to locate her through her phone, which always directed callers to her voicemail, the L.A. Times said.
Ms. Nenigar called 911 one day before her disappearance after getting lost and being unable to find her way back, according to local news broadcaster KTLA.
“I think I fell asleep at the wheel,” Ms. Nenigar told a 911 dispatcher. “I was tired so I went to go pull over, but I think I ran off the road.”
She had been staying at a hotel in Blythe, a city in Riverside County, and left on Feb. 27 at 3:44 a.m., just three hours before her 911 call, according to the L.A. Times.
She tried to describe her whereabouts in the hour-long 911 call but was without phone service and couldn’t remember the road she had been driving on. She provided some coordinates but the dispatcher was unable to locate her, the L.A. Times said.
“She did not have to die like this,” Marissa Nenigar, the victim’s sister, told KTLA’s Rachel Menitoff. “If they would have listened to her 911 call and wrote down the coordinates, again, she would still be here with us. She would still be alive. Her daughters wouldn’t be without a mother right now.”
Ms. Nenigar’s nude body, which authorities said likely had been there for weeks, was found a month later under a tree a mile and a half from her vehicle just outside Cibola, Ariz., an area in La Paz County near the border between California and Arizona.
Her blue Toyota Camry had been found a week after the 911 call and had been stuck on a desert boulder, the L.A. Times reported.
“We believe she went under the tree to try to get some shelter from the elements. As you may know, it gets hot in the Arizona desert,” La Paz County Sheriff William Ponce told KTLA. “Her clothes were strewn along the path that we believe she took prior to making it to that tree where she ended up passing.”
Mr. Ponce said authorities believed Ms. Nenigar had died due to exposure but her cause of death has not yet been determined, the L.A. Times said.
