Mystery As Missing Danielle McGowan Found Dead In Car — Answered Strange Phone Call [UPDATED]
Danielle McGowan, a 25-year-old woman from Tacoma, Washington, vanished seemingly without a trace in the early hours of Saturday morning, reportedly after answering a strange phone call from an unidentified person on the other end. Her frightened family has been desperately trying to get the word out about Danielle’s disappearance all week.
But late on Thursday night, according to a report from a local TV news reporter, the family’s worst fears were realized. The KOMO reporter, Kara Kostanich, posted a message on her Twitter feed saying that the young woman, who had never showed up for her job Monday morning at Metropolitan Market in the North End neighborhood of Tacoma, was found dead.
McGowan was found in her car, Kostanich reported, presumably the same dark grey 2015 Mazda 6 in which she was last seen driving away from a home in the North End between 2:30 a.m. and 3 a.m. on Saturday morning.
Missing Tacoma woman Danielle McGowen was found dead inside her car in Tacoma. Cause remains unclear. #liveonkomo pic.twitter.com/jPBvZRUFIy
— Kara Kostanich (@KaraKostanich) July 17, 2015
As of early Friday morning, no further details had become available on where Danielle McGowan was found in her car, and as Kostanich reported, the cause of her death “remains unclear.”
UPDATE 10:20 A.M. Pacific Time: According to the Tacoma News Tribune newspaper, police say that foul play is not suspected in the death of Danielle McGowan.
While her cause of death remains undetermined, the body of Danielle McGowan is scheduled for an autopsy Friday afternoon.
Her car was found by a passer-by parked in a lot at Sixth Avenue and North Stevens Street in Tacoma.
McGowan’s family issued the following statement.
“We know that she is at peace, which is a comfort as we begin the journey of grieving her death and figuring out how to live without her; but we are stunned and emotionally reeling.”
According to an earlier KOMO report, McGowan was visiting friends at the home in the North End late Friday night into Saturday, when she received the mysterious phone call. After answering the call, she abruptly left her friends’ home, driving off in the direction of downtown.
In another disturbing detail — in a case in which few details have become public — a male friend of Danielle McGowan also got a strange an unsettling phone call on Saturday morning.
“He said that someone picked up the phone, he heard the sound of breathing and then there was a hang-up,” said McGowan’s sister, Sharon Shadwell, who was coordinating the family’s desperate efforts to find Danielle.
Police as late as Thursday said they had no evidence to make them believe that Danielle was in danger, though her family members said they were “scared to death” because to simply drop out touch was unheard of for Danielle.
Sadly, it now appears that she was in the worst possible danger.
Throughout the week, her family had tried calling her on her cell phone, but the phone had either been shut off deliberately or simply run out of battery power without being recharged.
A report on KCPQ-TV in Seattle said that, citing Tacoma police, Danielle had “made plans to meet someone” downtown, but there were no details on who that person was or what the urgency to meet the person at three o’clock in the morning might be.
McGowan was identified on social media as the daughter of George McGowan, a former professional football player in the Canadian Football League, who was in 2013 inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame.
While it now appears that the search for Danielle McGowan has ended in far worse fashion than the search for missing Dawn VadBunker of Oxnard, California — who was located alive and well this week after vanishing on July 3 — the report by Kostanich stating that Danielle was found dead in her car had not yet been independently confirmed as of early Friday morning.
[Image: Twitter]
