The body of a young woman who had disappeared two months ago was discovered by a Selma police chief, who went alone to inspect an area that had already been extensively searched.
22-year-old Julissa Fuentes appears to have blasted off a cliff in the Sierra Nevada foothills shortly after she was last seen at a Selma gas station before dawn on August 7. Flat Lake, she was dead inside.
The discovery was made after Police Chief Rudy Alcaraz found old car wrecks and tracks along the road. He called in the search team at the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office, which used a drone to find the wrecked car.
Early in the search, police began focusing on Pine Flat Lake, a 40-mile drive from Selma. The last sounds from Fuente’s phone came from there.
But as the days passed, the police expanded the scope of the search and began to treat it as a criminal investigation. Fuentes’ father told reporters he believed she had been kidnapped.
Fuentes had driven to a gas station around 4 a.m. on August 7, a Sunday, after attending a family gathering in Selma. She is seen in a surveillance video making a purchase and then driving away. Her sister later saw two missed calls made from Fuentes’ phone around 5:30 AM. The family reported her missing that evening.
Adventures With Purpose, the diving group that found the body of missing Truckee teen Kelly Rodney, announced in late August that it would join the search for Fuentes.
The silver car was finally seen on Monday in a group of trees at the bottom of a cliff. The recovery team rushed to investigate, and found the body.
The sheriff’s office said it did not suspect a dirty game.
Originally published at San Jose News Bulletin
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