A desperate search in Central California for a mother and her baby daughter missing for more than a month ended with the discovery of their bodies in a submerged car in a large irrigation canal about 25 miles southeast of Stockton.
Whisper Owen, 36, and her 8-month-old daughter, Sandra McCarty, were last seen July 15 in Fresno, after Owen brought Sandra in for a routine checkup, then visited her brother and mother. Owen and her baby left around 5 p.m., with Owen hoping to cover the 155 miles to their home in Elk Grove near Sacramento before dark, a family member told CNN earlier.
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On Sunday morning, a group that specializes in finding people in submerged vehicles contacted the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office, saying they had found an SUV in the canal that matched the silver 2006 Chevrolet Trailblazer that Owen was driving, sheriff’s office spokeswoman Heather Brent said Sunday.
“The family was out there and confirmed that it was them,” Brent said.
The vehicle was found beneath a bridge over the canal at Highway 120 and Victory Ave., Brent said, in an agricultural area about 60 miles from Elk Grove.
“Our hearts go out to the family,” Brent said. “This is absolutely not the outcome that anybody anticipated or wanted.”
Jared Leisek, founder of the underwater-search-and-recovery team Adventures with Purpose, said in a social media post Sunday that his organization “located Sandra McCarty and Whisper Owen with sonar, pinned under a bridge, underwater” in the silver Trailblazer SUV. Working with diver Juan Heredia from Stockton-based Angels Recovery, “we were able to confirm Whisper is inside the vehicle,” Leisek said. “She was doing everything she could as a mother to try to save her daughter,” Leisek said.
In addition to her baby, Owen had a 17-year-old child from a previous relationship and kids who are 3 and 8 with her partner.
Her brother Richard Owen told CNN earlier he had spent several days sleeping in his car as he and his wife frantically traveled highways and back roads in search of his sister.
Owen’s family said earlier she had high blood pressure that had worsened since she gave birth, and that they worried she may have had a medical emergency while driving.
On Sunday, Richard Owen said on a GoFundMe page that he was “little Brother to Whisper Owen and uncle to a beautiful 8 month old little angel named Sandra McCarty. … Unfortunately I don’t know why this has happened to my loving sister and her beautiful daughter.”
Fresno police are investigating the incident, and the San Joaquin County medical examiner’s office will seek to determine the cause of death, Brent said.