In the days after Christmas Eve, a Texas family clung to desperate hope they would be reunited with their missing teenager — even as they waited in grueling uncertainty while investigators worked around the clock searching for her.
That hope gave way to grief on Wednesday as the intensive, weeklong search came to a tragic end when authorities confirmed 19-year-old Camila Mendoza Olmos, who went missing near San Antonio, was found dead near her home.
The manner of death was ruled to be suicide, the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office said.
Her family never stopped asking for prayers that this holiday season would end in joy, pleading for the teen’s safe return.
“I thought I would find her like other times, walking, and we would come home together,” her mother, Rosario Olmos, said in Spanish to CNN affiliate KENS the day after Mendoza Olmos went missing.
The teenager had a “family that loves her” and a “life to live,” said her mother.
“I miss her. Daddy’s waiting for her at home,” her father, Alfonso Mendoza, had told CNN affiliate KSAT.
Friends, too, had to endure an agonizing week as they searched for the missing teen.
“We’ve gone day and night, scraping our legs, not eating, just helping,” Camila Estrella, one of Mendoza Olmos’ best friends, told CNN affiliate WOAI.
The family is now requesting the public to “respect our pain” and continue to pray for them “during this incredibly difficult time,” Nancy Olmos, who said she’s the cousin of the 19-year-old’s mother, wrote in a Facebook post Wednesday.
How the weeklong search unfolded
Members of Mendoza Olmos’ community had lined up with maps and a drone to try to solve the mysterious disappearance. Dozens of volunteers helped to search for her over the holiday as Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said the teenager could be in imminent danger.
Authorities continued urging residents to share any available video that could help aid in their search.
Mendoza Olmos was last seen on a neighbor’s surveillance camera just before 7 a.m. on Christmas Eve outside her house. After she was seen looking inside her vehicle, the footage ends, according to the sheriff’s office, and there is no clear sign of where she went after that.
“As a Ring camera, it stops when it stops detecting motion,” Estrella told WOAI. “That’s all we saw of her, just opening the back of her car door. … We have nothing to trace her with.”
Family members and investigators say they’re not sure why she was looking inside the car. Since the vehicle was left behind, they believe she left the neighborhood on foot.
The sheriff’s office released a second video Monday showing what investigators believe is the last confirmed sighting of the teen. Dash-cam footage shared by a driver on their way to work around 7 a.m. on Christmas Eve shows a pedestrian believed to be Mendoza Olmos walking northbound on Wildhorse Parkway, between Shetland Wind and Caspian Spring.
The notice of Mendoza Olmos’ disappearance was issued as a CLEAR Alert. In Texas, that requires investigators to believe that the missing person “is in imminent danger of bodily injury or death” or the disappearance is “involuntary such as an abduction or kidnapping,” according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Salazar had told CNN on Monday they “can’t rule anything out at this point in the investigation.”
A ‘heartbreaking’ ending
As the news of Mendoza Olmos’ disappearance spread across the community, the search efforts grew intense.
Authorities in Nuevo León, Mexico — where Mendoza Olmos has some family — had even put out a missing persons flyer about the teen, according to a post on the missing persons division of the Nuevo León Attorney General’s office Facebook page and her aunt, Celia Nora Olmos Sánchez, who lives locally.
Her mother told CNN affiliate KWEX she doesn’t think her daughter would voluntarily leave with a stranger. “Cami’s not like that,” Olmos said. “Cami is very careful.”
A confusing trail of information was left for investigators to follow. Mendoza Olmos appears to have had her car keys with her when she disappeared, even though she didn’t take the car.
The teen left behind her cellphone and an iPad, according to authorities. Without a cellphone to monitor her movements, local and federal investigators had been looking for other evidence of where Mendoza Olmos may have gone, such as outbound flights and border crossings, Salazar told CNN.
A major development in the case came on Tuesday as a joint force team of Bexar County Sheriff’s Office deputies and FBI agents were conducting an open field search of an area they had checked once before. About 10 minutes into their search, they found a body, located “a few hundred yards” from the teen’s home, the sheriff said.
“Due to high brush, we made a conscious decision to head back out there and check again,” he explained. Officials were preparing to announce that another missing teen had been found safe when a call about the body came in, Salazar said.
It wasn’t until the following day that a devastating reality became clear: Mendoza Olmos had been found dead after her body was identified by the medical examiner, the sheriff said.
The body was found on property belonging to a local landscape materials company, which said it is “deeply saddened” by the discovery and asked for “privacy and compassion for all involved as this matter is handled,” it wrote on Facebook Tuesday evening. The company said it is cooperating with law enforcement throughout the investigation.
Officials had been aware of and looking for a firearm belonging to one of Mendoza Olmos’ relatives that was missing, Salazar said. A firearm was recovered near the teenager’s body on Tuesday, the sheriff previously said, but officials had not processed it at that point.
CNN has contacted the sheriff’s office about the status of the firearm.
The investigation so far has revealed that Mendoza Olmos was going through “a very tough time” before she went missing, the sheriff said.
“It’s heartbreaking,” he continued.
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