Identified! CA - Montclair, WhtFem teen, hit by car, Sep'05 - Samantha Bonnell

[Kymistry35]

Thanks for posting. I actually worked on that one for a while. I see a resemblance between the recon and the actual person, but not enough where I would have reconized her.

 

[outofthedark]

Usually when the NCMEC removes a case or two from the Unidentified page, I scan the pages of UIDs to see which case(s) they have removed. This time, when they removed two cases- I couldn't tell which cases they had removed! I went to the Doe Network to see which ones, I managed to find out by searching their site for NCMEC UID's and came up with 21UFCA. Doe hasn't listed her identification yet- they did list another recently identified NCMEC Jane Doe- one that was found in NC in 2003.

NCMEC has also ID'd another Doe Net Jane Doe as Danielle Hutton: http://z13.invisionfree.com/PorchlightUSA/index.php?showtopic=10536

 

[Kymistry35]

I worked on that one too, she was the one hit by the truck driver after hitching a ride, correct?

 

[annemc2]

That is very nice of Samantha's family to acknowledge the doenetwork in her obituary and request that donations be sent to the organization that helped identify her. This whole ordeal must have been very hard on them.

 

[outofthedark]

I worked on that one too, she was the one hit by the truck driver after hitching a ride, correct?

I'm not sure

 

[KarlK]

Any idea what she was doing on the interstate? Was she running from someone?

Interestingly, some of her belongings were found in South Carolina 5 months after her death, see link below. The link has a picture of Samantha, she doesn't really look like the image on Doe Network so I guess that's why it took that long to ID her. This wasn't murder but it sure looks like some sort of foul play did occur.

http://www.hanahanpolice.com/pressroomi.asp?newsid=210

 

[outofthedark]

Danielle Hutton was last seen at a dentist's office in 1998. Samantha Bonnel (21UFCA) was seen running in the #3 lane of traffic on the Interstate-10 and was struck by a car and then several. I always wondered what she was doing running in the 3rd land of traffic on a interstate at close to midnight (or whatever time she was running at)

 

[KarlK]

What do Danielle Hutton's and Samantha Bonnell's cases have in common?

 

[outofthedark]

What do Danielle Hutton's and Samantha Bonnell's cases have in common?

They were both found in California, both were teenagers

 

[audrey77]

Doe Network reports that she's been ID'd

 

[KT Can]

Doe Network reports that she's been ID'd

I just saw this on DN and the link to Nicole Jenkins on NCMEC says that "the case you requested does not exist or has been removed from the site". I wonder if it was her... very sad ending if so...

Edited to add that I can't seem to find Liz Bacome on any of the missing sites anymore. I had suggested her in post 14.

 

[Rle7]

Law enforcement didn't help Mary Weir track down her missing daughter this spring. On her own, she found her daughter's picture on the Internet and connected her to Jane Doe 17-05 in San Bernardino County,
Calif.

Samantha Bonnell left her Palmer home two or three days shy of her 18th birthday and moved to California, Weir said. The last Weir heard of Samantha was a September 2005 phone call from her boyfriend saying she'd run off after a fight at a Montclair, Calif., movie theater.

It wasn't until April that Weir learned her daughter died that night, struck by several cars as she ran across Interstate 10. Samantha had no identification on her and she lay unclaimed at the San Bernardino County Coroner's Office until Weir called.

Alaska State Troopers took a missing persons report for Weir after Samantha's luggage surfaced in South Carolina. Weir's tenacity led her to the coroner's office.

Still she wasn't acting alone. She had help from Doe Network, a missing/unidentified persons advocacy group and from deputy coroner investigator David Van Norman, San Bernardino County's unidentified persons coordinator.

Though the news was bad, Weir said Van Norman gave her the first comfort she'd had in 19 months. Finally she knew what happened.

160 ATTEMPTS TO IDENTIFY BODY

"Can you imagine the courage it would take for a mother, terrified, not knowing the fate of her young daughter, to call a coroner?" Van Norman wrote by e-mail.

Weir's call was the 160th attempt by someone to match a missing person with Jane Doe 17-05, Van Norman wrote.

He counts himself an advocate for unidentified persons. His e-mail was at its most strident in criticizing law enforcement for what he sees as its relaxed attitude toward missing persons reports. He said he's heard countless stories of people turned away while trying to report someone missing. And he was very critical of the National Crime Information Center report troopers made for Weir.

"Samantha's NCIC gave the date that she was last seen as six months after she died!" Van Norman wrote.

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/matsu/story/9314735p-9229738c.html

 

[CarlK90245]

I just noticed that the Samantha Bonnell case will be featured on the next episode of Disappeared (on the Investigation Discovery ID Channel). They usually profile persons who are still missing, but this case is one of a few exceptions.

David Van Norman appears in the preview advertisements, describing how Samantha was last seen running out of a movie theater in tears. So if any of you are interested in seeing who Van Norman is and what he looks like, the show is next Monday on the ID Channel.

BTW, he also appeared in the Disappeared episode that featured April Pitzer.

 

[CarlK90245]

I just got done watching the Disappeared episode on Samantha Bonnell. It's a very interesting episode, and they go into quite a bit of detail regarding DoeNetwork, and how Samantha's mother was able to utilize DoeNet to find her daughter.

ID Channel frequently airs re-runs of Disappeared episodes, so I recommend this episode for those of you who did not catch it this time around.

 

[cluciano63]

I just watched this, what a horrible mistake was made by typing in the wrong date on the NCIC report...Samantha's mother would never have found out what happened to her daughter if she had not done the work herself, and brought herself to the point where she called the coroner in SB.

This episode will be replayed on Sunday March 20 at 6pm EST.

 

[CMac2]

Just saw this on Disappeared, and was absolutely horrified to hear what Samantha's mother had to go through. Thank goodness there was the Doe Network available for her, otherwise her daughter never would have been identified, thanks to a series of errors/bad judgment calls made by law enforcement. For Samantha's mom to have to put herself through this kind of stress and terror in order to find her daughter- with no help- is devastating.

I am totally unconvinced that Samantha was running along the center median of the highway for no reason at all, but am grateful she can now RIP.

Prayers to the family.

 

[ssiegmund]

Had not heard of it before; it is tragic...they need to find those people she allegedly went to the movies with. Although there was apparently no foul play involved, I really doubt she ran out of the movies. I think she took some type of drug that didn't show up on the toxicology report, got disoriented and jumped out of the vehicle, and the others came up with the story about the movies.

 

[CMac2]

Had not heard of it before; it is tragic...they need to find those people she allegedly went to the movies with. Although there was apparently no foul play involved, I really doubt she ran out of the movies. I think she took some type of drug that didn't show up on the toxicology report, got disoriented and jumped out of the vehicle, and the others came up with the story about the movies.

ITA. I don't know if this is the appropriate place to discuss these theories (if not, mods, please remove). After watching last night's Disappeared, I wondered if Samantha somehow found herself seperated from the group at the movies, and got left behind by them. I've seen these magazine sales people roaming my neighborhood, and they're a tough bunch of people, generally speaking. If she got seperated from them for whatever reason, they may have figured she would be fine, and would find a way back to the hotel if she wanted to. Faced with her boyfriend's disgust at their simply leaving her behind, they may have simply made the story up about her getting upset and leaving unexpectedly. Meanwhile, after realizing she'd been left by the group, she may have hitched a ride with some lunatic somewhere, and attempted to escape the vehicle on the highway.

Who knows, but I can't shake the feeling that there was a real reason she was running down the median of one of the busiest highways when she was struck that night. I don't think it was a random tragedy or a fluke accident.

 

[CarlK90245]

Who knows, but I can't shake the feeling that there was a real reason she was running down the median of one of the busiest highways when she was struck that night. I don't think it was a random tragedy or a fluke accident.

Having driven that stretch of highway on many occasions, it's scary enough going through there in a car. There are lots of speeders and lane-changers, and teenaged hoodlums in their lowered Hondas with the wind fairings on the back. Everyone is going 75-80 mph, and they are right on your bumper.

It's nuts enough to try to run down any freeway, but on the 10 freeway through the Inland Empire, it's a sure-thing suicide mission.

They mentioned in the episode that she had Methamphetamine in her system. I suspect that she probably was using drugs with strangers from her group. And while they in a car on the freeway, she freaked out and jumped out of their vehicle while it was stopped in traffic. Once the traffic started moving again, she had no way to get over to either the shoulder or the median. And since it was raining at the time, nobody even saw her.

 

[CMac2]

I think the autopsy showed methamphetamine in her system, but only trace amounts. Of course, I'm no expert, and for all I know that's all it takes- trace amounts- for someone to be under its influence and exhibiting strange behavior.

Does anyone else know whether or not trace amounts of the drug would be enough to alter her behavior/mentals?