Investigator: 'Somebody somewhere knows something'
The minivan driven by Shantina Smiley, 29, was found partially submerged Sunday with its doors open. A wallet containing Smiley driver's license, some cash and credit cards were found in the van, but neither she nor her son was anywhere in sight.
"Apparently she got stuck and abandoned the car," said Lt. Chris Mealy of the county sheriff's office. There was no indication that a crime took place inside the 2005 Dodge Caravan, he added.
Detectives have traced Smiley's path from her home in Silverdale to the far reaches of Thurston County, more than 50 miles north of her stepfather's house in Castle Rock in Cowlitz County and far from any road that would have led her there.
Mealy said Smiley had called her fiance Saturday night in northwest Olympia to update him on her location because she had left her cell phone at home. An employee at an east Olympia diner where she bought a corn dog told investigators she left without her purchase and then tripped and fell walking back to her van, but Mealy said the fall was not serious.
The elderly couple who lived nearby said they let Smiley use their phone to call her grandfather, gave her son a piece of pizza, and then directed her back to the freeway. She wasn't heard from again.
"These are two people who just disappeared off the face of the earth- it seems like," said Dennis Williams, who helped Smiley. "She said, 'I need to know how to get back to the freeway.'"
"The homeowners said she acted nervous because she was lost," Mealy said. She was not injured but spoke of an accident, which investigators believe may have been a reference to falling down at the diner.
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Mealy said that as she left the home, Smiley made another series of driving errors that eventually led her to a hard-to-find dirt path and driving onto the beach.
"It gets dark up there. It gets really, really dark," Mealy said. "I was there Sunday afternoon. I had trouble finding that trail in the daylight."
Friends and family described Smiley as a responsible, mature, rational woman. She has no history of substance abuse, Mealy said.
"How worried am I? I can't put into words," said Silas Smith, Smiley's step-grandfather. "Woke up this morning, tried to pray. I couldn't even pray. The words just weren't there."
Smiley's fiance, Robb Simmons, and Smiley's stepfather began searching for Smiley and her son, Azriel Carver, after she didn't arrive at their planned meeting spot Saturday. Azriel is a second-grader at Vinland Elementary in the North Kitsap School District, according to school principal Charley McCabe.
"I have no idea of why she would have ended up down that road," Simmons wrote on his Web site.
Mealy said Smiley has "no friends or relatives or lovers or boyfriends in Olympia or Thurston County."
"Somebody somewhere knows something," Mealy said. "She could be missing voluntarily. Something untoward could have happened to her. She could have done something untoward to her son. We have no clue."
"I'm missing the woman that I love, missing her son who's a good kid," said Simmons. "Where's she at? Where (are) they at?Where is my fiance and her son? Where (are) they at?"
