An Oregon woman who went missing Saturday after accepting a ride from another driver when her car ran out of gas has been found safe and unhurt, state police announced Friday, after her family publicly asked for assistance in finding her.
Police revealed no information Friday concerning the disappearance of 28-year-old Maria Linda Jade Kilmer, instead thanking individuals who provided tips and law enforcement partners who assisted in the investigation.
Kilmer was last seen on Highway 22 near milepost 15, east of Salem, Oregon State Police previously reported. According to investigators, Kilmer was going from Lyons to Salem with a passenger when they ran out of petrol at 9 p.m. Kilmer requested assistance from her stepmother and sister and gave her position on her phone so they could find her, according to her mother, Carmen Bitzer of Washington. But when they arrived, Kilmer had left, leaving the passenger alone.
The passenger, whom Kilmer’s family says officials instructed them not to identify, reported that Kilmer fled with a passerby who stopped to provide assistance.
“Something doesn’t seem to be rightwonderful,” the woman’s stepmother, Amber Brecht, told KATU on Wednesday after she went missing. “We’ve realized something is amiss here. Something may have happened that she does not want to share with us, which is also great. We do not need to know what happened. We simply want to know that she is safe and alive.”
Her sister claimed that Kilmer left behind her phone, wallet, keys, glasses, and meds, which her family claims she would never forsake.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” her sister Jasmine Humeland told OregonLive on Thursday. “My sister’s not the kind of person to just leave somebody on the side of the road, and I don’t think she would have just gotten into a stranger’s car.”
Brecht added to the mystery by saying she has gotten a succession of text messages from unknown numbers claiming to be Kilmer, but the words do not sound like her daughter.
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