Mystery after mom and daughter vanish during a routine trip home: ‘I'm desperate to find my daughter'
Whisper Owen, 36, and her 8-month-old daughter, Sandra McCarty, were last seen nearly two weeks ago on July 15, according to police.
'I'm desperate to find my daughter and her baby,' Owen's mother, Vickie Torres, told CNN.
Owen, from Elk Grove in Sacramento County, was in Fresno for a routine checkup for her daughter, Torres said. She had left in the evening and hoped to get home before dark, her mother said, but she never returned.
'It's like she vanished into thin air,' Torres said.
Owen's brother, Richard, fears his sister may have had a medical emergency as her family told CNN she suffers from high blood pressure.
'My fear is that maybe there was a medical emergency behind the wheel, and maybe she had veered off the road,' Richard told the outlet. 'I can't help but to feel like something horrible has happened.'
Torres said, 'Everything is good in her life right now. There's no reason for her to have taken off.'
Police told CNN there is nothing to suggest foul play is involved in Owen's disappearance.
Owen has three other children: a 17-year-old, an 8-year-old, and a 3-year-old. Richard says the children are 'all devastated wanting to know if and when they will see their mother again.'
Timeline of Owen's disappearance
Owen had an 8:30 a.m. doctor's appointment for her daughter on Tuesday, July 15. Before the checkup, she visited her mother's house, where she changed and fed her daughter.
After the appointment, she visited her brother's house. Richard said he last saw his sister at around 2:45 p.m. local time.
Owen then went back to her mother's house to eat lunch and play with the baby, according to her mother.
The Fresno County Sheriff's Office said in a Facebook post Owen and her daughter had left the city at around 5 p.m.
A traffic camera last captured her 2006 Chevrolet Trailblazer just after 8 p.m. in Atwater, about an hour-and-a-half drive southeast of Elk Grove and around an hour northwest of Fresno, police say.
The Fresno Police Department told CNN they believe Owen and her daughter are not in the Fresno area.
Owen's partner didn't realize she was missing until Saturday, Richard said. Her partner thought Owen had stayed to help her mother clean up a house she had recently purchased, according to Richard.
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