Two bodies were pulled out of a canal in California, thus bringing a tragic end to the search for a missing mother and baby.
Whisper Owen, 36, and her 8-month-old daughter, Sandra McCarty, were found lifeless in a submerged 2006 Chevrolet Trailblazer in San Joaquin County on Sunday, August 17.
“Something sounds fishy about all this,” one commented after the discovery.
Highlights
- Whisper Owen, 36, and her 8-month-old daughter, Sandra McCarty, were last seen on July 15.
- The mother and child attended a doctor’s appointment and visited relatives before they disappeared.
- A frantic search for them began after they didn’t return home to Whisper’s partner and other children.
- Their bodies were pulled out of a canal near Oakdale.
The frantic search for a mother and daughter ended after two bodies were pulled out of a canal in California
Image credits: Fresno County Sheriff's Office / Facebook
Image credits: gofundme
Whisper and Sandra were last seen on July 15 before they vanished without a trace.
“I’m desperate to find my daughter and her baby,” Whisper’s mother, Vickie Torres, told CNN days after they disappeared.
“It’s like she vanished into thin air,” she added.
Image credits: Fresno Police Department / Facebook
On July 15, Whisper spent the day driving to Fresno for a routine checkup for her little one.
Following the 8:30 a.m. appointment, she visited her mother’s house in Fresno, where she changed and fed her daughter before heading to her brother’s house.
Whisper Owen, 36, and her 8-month-old daughter, Sandra McCarty, were last seen on July 15
Image credits: Fresno County Sheriff's Office / Facebook
Image credits: Diver Juan Heredia / Facebook
Relatives said she then went back to her mother’s house, had lunch, played with her child, and then left by around 5 p.m.
The plan was for her to return before dark to her Elk Grove home, where her partner Robert McCarty and her other children were waiting for them.
Investigators found that Whisper took a longer route back home, which would have added about half an hour to her trip.
Family members suspected that she might have taken the longer route because she had a damaged headlight and may have tried to avoid getting pulled over by cops.
Whisper visited family in Fresno with her daughter before making the drive back home to Elk Grove
Image credits: ABC30 Action News / YouTube
Unfortunately, the mother and child never returned home. But her partner did not raise the alarm because it wasn’t unusual for Whisper to stay back home with her family in Fresno for multiple days.
The partner eventually contacted her family after 3-4 days, and only then did they realize something was wrong.
A missing persons report was then filed on July 19, four days after the mother and daughter were last seen.
Investigators began searching for Whisper and her baby girl. When they pinged the mother’s phone, they received a response from a waterway in a canal near Oakdale.
Her sunken Chevrolet Trailblazer was found pinned under a bridge last week by the search group Adventures With Purpose and diver Juan Heredia.
The sunken Chevrolet Trailblazer was found pinned under a bridge near Oakdale
Image credits: Diver Juan Heredia / Facebook
“It means we can find some way to move forward and accept this loss. She has other children that have to find a way to move on without their mother or their baby sister,” Whisper’s brother Richard Owen said after the discovery.
Whisper suffered from high blood pressure, and her brother expressed fears over his sister possibly having a medical emergency behind the wheel.
“My fear is that maybe there was a medical emergency behind the wheel, and maybe she had veered off the road,” he told CNN last month.
Brother Richard Owen said there was no reason for Whisper to want to “disappear or to leave”
Image credits: ABC10 / YouTube
“I can’t help but to feel like something horrible has happened,” he added. “The last time I talked to my sister, she was talking about how good life was. She was just happy. There was no reason for her to want to disappear or to leave.”
Her mother described Whisper as a “very loving person.”
“Everybody loves Whisper,” she told the outlet last month.
Image credits: gofundme
Whisper was a mother to a 17-year-old teenager from a previous relationship. She also shared an 8 and a 3-year-old with her current partner.
The now-deceased mother had an outstanding warrant for child ab***, issued in Sacramento County on October 3, 2023. The case was not related to 8-month-old Sandra.
The missing mother had an outstanding arrest warrant in connection with a 2020 felony child ab*** case
Image credits: gofundme
Image credits: gofundme
Whisper pleaded no contest to felony child ab*** in 2021.
“People are trying to make her out to be some kind of monster that hurts her children now that we shared about her warrant, and that’s not my sister,” Richard told YourCentralValley.com last week.
Officials are still investigating how the mother and daughter wound up in the canal.
“I don’t think this was accidental,” netizens speculated, “she probably drove into the canal”
