A woman who was kidnapped at a rest stop in Montana called her husband, her daughter and a police officer from the trunk of the vehicle in which she was kidnapped and then taken to her death, police say.
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Her body was found 523km away near Spokane airport on the Washington state border.
Deputies say Rita Maze, a 47-year-old Great Falls woman was discovered there Wednesday morning. They used technology to track her phone and found her vehicle in a trucking company’s parking lot.
The FBI said Wednesday it had identified a potential suspect, and some news reports indicated a person had been pursued near the industrial area where Maze’s body was found. Authorities found a gun and two casings next to the woman’s body in the trunk, KREM reports. “I believe she was abducted”, said her daughter, Rochelle.
In her final moments, desperate to survive, the elementary-school cook called her family in Great Falls, Montana, and tried to relay as much information as she could about what happened, relatives said.
“She is saying she’s kidnapped”, Dutton said.
The Spokane County Medical Examiner’s Office concluded Maze died of the single gunshot wound, but said further investigation was needed to determine whether the death was a homicide.
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.
Bob Maze reported his wife of 26 years missing Tuesday night after she he had not returned to Great Falls from a trip to her hometown of Helena, Mont., 90 miles to the south.
Sheriff Dutton said: “There were phone conversations with her from this office, from the Helena Police Department just prior to her death”. Was she abducted, murdered or something else? But her main message was horrifyingly clear- she had been hit on the head, kidnapped, and thrown into a trunk of a auto.
Rochelle added: “I told her that I loved her”.
CCTV footage from both stations is being examined, investigators said.
“She went to see her mom”.
Knezovich told the Spokesman-Review people should not call her death a homicide “until we actually find out what is going on”.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help Mrs Maze’s family.
A woman who was abducted in the U.S. state of Montana spoke to her family by telephone several times before she died.
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“We need to do whatever it takes to make things easier for the family to grieve”, Shanley Day, the organizer, wrote in the description. She also said her mother’s credit card was used twice in the time she was missing.
