Her daughter Rochelle, who also spoke to her, said her mother was hysterical on the calls they had but Maze also managed to speak to local police officers in a bid to track her down.
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Authorities said Rita Maze also used her phone to tell them she was abducted along the interstate, according to ABC affiliate KXLY.
Authorities have identified the woman as 47-year-old Rita Maze of Great Falls. She called her husband about 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, authorities told KXLY.
They said she’d made the phone calls from the trunk of the auto, where she said a man she didn’t know had forced her after having struck her on the head.
Knezovich told the Spokesman-Review people should not call her death a homicide “until we actually find out what is going on”.
The Lewis and Clark County Sheriff’s Office, the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are all collaborating on the case. We as a community will come together in this horrific time for the Maze family. It’s a bad thing to have happen, but we will work to find out what did happen.
Deputies from the Spokane County Sheriff’s Department found Maze’s body in the trunk. “But that’s got to be confirmed by cell phone records”.
They were not able to reach Rita Maze again.
“She was talking to my dad and had told him ‘help me, help me, ‘ she was in the trunk of her auto”, Rochelle told KRTV. “She’s elderly and failing, so she was in Helena to see her”.
“My mom was always a playful mom”, Rochelle said.
Rita told her daughter, Rochelle, the man holding her captive knew about the gun she kept in her vehicle. “She did not hit herself, stuff herself in the trunk and drive all the way to Spokane and shoot herself”.
“I told her that I loved her”, Rochelle said.
It was the last contact they would have with her.
Helena police put out an attempt to locate the vehicle nationwide, and the license plate of the vehicle was spotted in Post Falls, Idaho, east of Spokane, Dutton said. Authorities used cell phone records to determine the auto was heading toward Spokane.
“It’s too early to tell”, he said, but “we would suspect now” that it was an random attack.
As investigators try to piece together how a Montana woman ended up dead in her auto near Spokane International Airport, they’re running into more questions than answers.
Sheriff Leo Dutton of Lewis and Clark County in Montana, where Maze reported she was taken, said nothing is being ruled out.
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Her loved ones have set up a GoFundMe account to support her family, and the campaign has raised more than $12,000 in just one day.
