The body of missing teen Tatiana Dugger was identified Thursday in Northern California, nearly four months after she was last seen, Butte County Sherriff’s Office announced.
On March 28, a hiker reported seeing a body in Siskiyou County, just eight miles outside Weed city. The Los Angeles Times confirmed Dugger’s identity on April 2, using DNA. The teen’s family reported her missing on Jan. 9.
Dugger’s sister Savannah Moreno told KTVU in January that she was leaving for Oakland with a man on New Year’s Eve the last time she saw her sibling. Moreno indicated that the family knew little about him.
“She left with him and went down to Oakland, so she was basically in Oakland for about a week,” Moreno said. We never knew him, we never knew him as a boyfriend, or nothing like that. But you know, we aren’t sure.”
At the time, police did a welfare check at the Westwind Lodge in Oakland, where the pair was supposed to stay but found nothing suspicious to indicate foul play. Phone records revealed Dugger’s last-known location was the northern California city– not near her Los Angeles home that she moved to with her family three months before she had gone missing.
Authorities have no information on how Dugger’s body got to Siskiyou County, off the side of the road, almost 300 miles from where she was last seen. However, they said her body had been there for an “extended period of time.”
A GoFundMe page that the teen’s sister started has gone from a missing person’s search to a fundraiser for Dugger’s burial.
Moreno wrote Saturday, “Our hearts will forever be broken by this news. Please continue to keep our family in your prayers.”
“Please continue to keep our family in your prayers. If you feel compelled to donate towards funeral costs, we thank you again and again. We are so thankful for our group of PI’s who have helped us throughout this whole process & who will continue to help and support us in finding justice for Tati,” she concluded.
Police have not released any information about a suspect or any arrests made in this case.
