Grim end to hunt for California mother who vanished with baby after cops began searching canal

Daily Mail​

4 hours ago

A family's desperate search for a missing California mother and her infant daughter has come to a grim end after her car was discovered in canal.
Whisper Owen, 36, was last seen with her eight-month-old daughter, Sandra, on July 15 when she was caught on camera in Atwater while making the three-hour drive home to Sacramento after a doctor's appointment in Fresno.
Over a month later, the Owen family announced on a GoFundMe page that they had been found in a canal not far from where they were last seen in the vehicle they were traveling in on Sunday.
Adventures with Purpose, a nonprofit that specializes in clearing waterways for missing people, discovered her car near Owen's last known cell phone ping near Highway 120, an area that police had previously searched.
'We were here for 30 minutes, and we were able to find my sister and my niece, and I feel like there wasn't nearly enough effort put forward. And I feel like a better job could have been done,' her brother, Richard Owen, told KCRA.
'If we had found her the next day, she still would have been here in the water, and she still would be gone. And we would all have to make peace with that as a family. But unfortunately, you know, it took a month for us to find her.'
The search team found her missing car submerged in the water and said they believe the mother had been trying to save her daughter when she died.
'It appears as though Whisper was making her way to the backseat to save her daughter, Sandra,' Jared Leisek with Adventures with Purpose told KXTV.
'Our sonar was able to shoot a beam underneath and identify that we have an object that appears to be in the size and shape of the 2006 Trailblazer.'
The California Highway Patrol and the sheriff's office are conducting parallel investigations to determine how the car ended up in the water.
'Our dive team has responded, and they did locate one adult in the vehicle and one infant in the vehicle,' the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office said.
Owen's mother, Vickie Torres, 58, previously told the Daily Mail that the family felt the police were not doing enough to find her.
'I feel like the cops are profiling my family. We all have records, so they think we are all ex-cons and druggies,' she said.
'But what about Sandra? She is a baby and the definition of innocence but they're being so casual about it.
'It's got me consumed and I'm trying not to be bitter or hateful. I'm really trying. It's hard, but I'm not going to get anywhere being angry at these people or talking to them with a bad demeanor. It's not going to help.'
Owen's brother, Richard, told the local news station that the family is devastated by the news but grateful to Adventures with Purpose for bringing them closure.
'It means that we can start finding some way to move forward, to accept this loss,' he said.
'She has other children that have to find a way to move on without their mother and without their baby sister.
'They were beautiful people who made a very big difference in this world and a lot of people's lives. That's what they deserve to be remembered as.'
Torres said on the day she disappeared, Owen had left her home in Sacramento at 4am to make a doctor's appointment in Fresno at 8.30am.
Afterwards, she spent time with her brother Richard before dropping in on Torres with baby Sandra in tow.
Having recently returned from a vacation in Wyoming with boyfriend Richard and her four children, Torres said she had been in an upbeat mood.
'She seemed completely well, she was wonderful,' Torres told the Daily Mail. 'She was telling me how their vacation went and said it was wonderful.
'There was nothing to suggest anything was wrong.'
According to Torres, Whisper left at around 5pm and was spotted on security store footage at a grocery store two blocks away an hour later, where she purchased baby formula.
Next, came the sighting in Atwater, 60 miles north of Fresno, around 8pm.
Since then, there had been no sign of Whisper, Sandra or her 2006 silver Chevrolet Trailblazer SUV until it was discovered by Adventures with Purpose.