The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Wednesday confirmed that the car belonging to a teen couple reported missing in the Angeles National Forest has been found wrecked at the bottom of a mountain — but the department was awaiting confirmation from the coroner on the identity of two bodies found inside the wreckage.
Police and volunteers had been searching for the couple — Sophie Rayanne Edwards and her boyfriend, Ethan Manzano, both 19 — for days before a volunteer rescuer used a drone to locate the wreckage at 5:18 p.m. Tuesday at mile marker 72 of the Angeles Crest Highway, according to ABC7.
Wednesday, a sheriff’s department spokeswoman, Eva Jimenez, told City News Service that the car discovered Tuesday was a 2007 Isuzu Ascender. That was the make and model of the car Manzano was driving.
The couple have been missing since July 1.
Police found the couple’s backpacks and identifications near the wreckage, according to ABC7.
“From a different ridgeline, we were able to actually spot the disturbance in the dirt,” the owner of the drone, Chad Keel of Wrightwood, told ABC7.
The sheriff’s Department and the California Highway Patrol will be conducting a joint investigation, said Jimenez.