Missing woman found dead

Published 4:00 am Thursday, March 10, 2011

A 26-year-old woman who was reported missing Tuesday was found dead in the Deschutes River Wednesday afternoon.

The Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office said the body of Carly Phillips was found at the lower end of Benham Falls at about 5:30 p.m. Authorities said there are no signs of foul play.

Investigators will look into the cause of Phillips’ death. An autopsy is scheduled for today.

Phillips left her parents’ Bend house around 2 p.m. on Tuesday to run errands, according to the Sheriff’s Office. Family members called police at around 7:30 p.m., after she did not return.

Police and family members started searching areas where they thought she might be, said Capt. Marc Mills with the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office. At around 10:30 p.m. Phillips’ brother-in-law found her black Subaru Outback parked at the Benham Falls day-use area.

“We started calling out our Search and Rescue folks around 11, 11:30 [Tuesday] night,” Mills said Wednesday afternoon. “They searched all night, down on the river bank. We got a fresh crew out about 8 o’clock this morning.”

Phillips’ car was parked in a snowy area, and crews found shoe prints leading from her car to the river, Mills said.

Search crews included Deschutes County patrol officers and Search and Rescue personnel, swift water rescue searchers, rescue personnel with the Bend Police Department and a helicopter from Leading Edge Aviation.

Phillips’ body was found just before dark, when authorities planned to call off the search for the day.

Phillips’ parents moved to Bend in 2002, Mills said, and Phillips recently moved here from Montana to be with them.

It does not appear that anyone else was with Phillips on Tuesday evening, he said.

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