UPDATE: A body was found Tuesday afternoon during a police search for 17-year-old Brissa Romero, who went missing a week ago.
“While formal identification of the remains is pending confirmation by the Lake County Coroner’s Office, the deceased female recovered from the pond matches Brissa’s description,” reads a joint press release by the Carpentersville and Vernon Hills police departments.
“Our hearts go out to Brissa’s family on this difficult day,” police wrote.
ORIGINAL: The car of a missing 17-year-old girl from the Chicago area was pulled from a retention pond on Monday as police continue to investigate her disappearance.
Brissa Romero has been missing since Dec. 4, when she failed to show up to a holiday work party at a bowling alley in Vernon Hills, Ill. Police wrote in a news release that they were searching for the teen, described as five feet tall with brown hair and brown eyes, as well as her grey 2008 Nissan Rogue.
One week later, on Monday afternoon, Carpentersville and Vernon Hills police held a joint press conference to announce that Romero’s car was found, though they have yet to find the teen herself.
Vernon Hills Chief of Police Patrick Kreis said investigators were led to a retention pond on Lakeview Parkway after analyzing Romero’s cellphone data. When police arrived, a witness told them that they had spotted a backpack floating on the edge of the pond.
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Police found the backpack, which appears to belong to Romero, and a more extensive search of the pond was initiated.
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About 60 feet into the pond, and 20 feet deep, a car was spotted. When crews pulled the vehicle from the pond they confirmed it was the grey Nissan Rogue police had been looking for.
“Based on the condition of the vehicle and all the evidence we have at this point, it appears that Brissa was in the vehicle when it drove into the lake,” Kreis said in Monday’s press conference.
“Even though we have not found Brissa in this vehicle at this point, it’s our belief that we need to continue to search this pond, and that is really the sole efforts of our search at this point.”
Kreis said this conclusion was supported by the discovery of surveillance footage that captured Romero visiting a fast food restaurant less than a mile and a half away from the pond on the night she went missing. She walked in and out of the restaurant by herself before driving away, approximately 15 minutes before her cellphone last pinged near the pond.
“From the preliminary review of what happened, it really appears this is a case where a driver, unfamiliar with the area, failed to navigate a turn and went through the intersection, down an embankment and into the pond,” Kreis said.
He described the pond as being just off a T-intersection where two parkways meet.
Crews continued to search for Romero’s body into Monday evening before efforts were suspended until Tuesday morning.
In Monday’s press conference, Romero’s sister Dulce thanked police for their efforts and members of the media for raising awareness about her missing sister.
“I do want to say thank you for everyone that has been keeping up with Brissa’s story. We have been able to get so many people’s eyes on this, and get so much help from a lot of people from a lot of countries, actually, to help spread the word of Brissa,” she said.
“The vehicle has no body inside,” she added. “In my heart, I still believe that she’s out there, but for now we’ll just keep investigating, and we will find her.”
Romero’s family is offering a US$14,000 reward for any information that could help them find her.
Romero is the youngest of her five siblings and was attending her first semester at Harper College when she went missing. Fox32 Chicago reports that she was working two jobs to pay for school and she was studying to be a sonogram nurse.
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