12 hours ago
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Deputies are still searching for a California woman and her 8-month-old daughter who went missing after they left a doctor's appointment more than two weeks ago.
Whisper Owen, 36, and her baby daughter, Sandra McCarty, were last seen on July 15, according to the Fresno County Sheriff's Office.
The sheriff's office said investigators still have no clues as to where the mother and daughter went or what lead to their disappearance.
The duo's loved ones are trying to make sense of the frightening developments.
“It just makes it really hard for me as her mother to shut my brain off and not constantly imagine what could’ve happened to her,” Owen’s mother, Vickie Torres, told the Los Angeles Times. “And that beautiful little baby. God, I hope, whatever happened, she’s with her mama.”
The Fresno Police Department's Missing Person's Unit is leading the investigation into the woman and child’s disappearance.
As of Wednesday, the department had nothing new to report, but noted that there was no reason to suspect foul play was involved in the disappearance.
“There is nothing in the current missing persons investigations which leads us to believe any foul play is involved with Whisper and her child not being located yet,” the department said in a statement to the LA Times.
On the day of their disappearance, Owen left her home in Elk Grove, where she lives with her partner and their three other children, around 4 a.m. She was leaving early to make a 160-mile drive to Fresno to make a doctor's appointment for 8-month-old Sandra.
After the doctor's visit, Owen visited her brother in Fresno and stayed there until around 2.45 p.m., after which she went to visit her mother's house. She left Fresno around 5 p.m., but never made it home.
A license plate reader in Atwater, approximately 65 miles from Fresno, flagged Owen's 2006 Chevy Trailblazer.
Surveillance footage from a nearby tobacco shop showed Owen changing Sandra's diaper in the parking lot about a half and hour before the license plate reader picked up her vehicle.
No one has heard from or seen the mother or daughter since.
Owen's mother, Torres, told the LA Times it wasn't unusual for her to stay in Fresno for days at a time. Three days later, she received a call from Owen's partner, who police have not identified, asking where she was.
“So then everything started to get scary at that point,” Torres told the paper.
Torres has been frustrated with the lack of answers from law enforcement. She contacted the Sacramento Police Department and the FBI for help, though she noted that neither have been responsive.
"They've all blown me off," she told the LA Times.
That's left family members to search the route between Elk Grove and Fresno searching for any sign of Owen. Torres said her daughter's other children are "losing their minds" and insisted her daughter would never run off and abandon her children.
She also told the paper that Owen's partner has been "constantly searching, and he's exhausting every resource to him."
Owen is 5'6 and weighs approximately 145 pounds. She has blue eyes and brown hair. Her daughter is an infant weighing around 17 pounds with green eyes and brown hair.
The Fresno County Sheriff's Department has asked anyone who sees Owen and her daughter to call 911 immediately.
