A college student who disappeared while jogging was found dead in a riverbed three days later after a search by neighbors and residents of this small Northwest town.
An autopsy report was expected soon on Amanda Stavik, 18. Whatcom County Sheriff Larry Mount said she was murdered."All these terrible things, all you can think is it doesn't happen to you. It doesn't happen on Strand Road. And it did," said Mary Stavik, the girl's mother. "People here aren't even careful about locking their doors."
The body was found about noon Monday in the shallow South Fork of the Nooksack River, a few miles from Ms. Stavik's family home on Strand Road. The woman apparently had been abducted while jogging alone Friday.
As word spread, residents gathered at a supermarket in this farming community of about 350 residents in the Cascade Mountain foothills, 80 miles north of Seattle and 20 miles south of the Canadian border.
"I didn't think that kind of thing happened here," said Tiffany La Monte, 17, a friend of Ms. Stavik.
Many of the Staviks' neighbors had joined the search in the forested hills and along Washington 9, a winding two-lane road. Donations to a reward fund for evidence on the killer exceeded $8,300.
Stavik, a freshman at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, was seen by her 13-year-old brother, Lee, when she went jogging with her dog, Kyra, while home from college on Thanksgiving break. The dog returned alone.