Family of Missing Indigenous Woman Locates Her Body in Heartbreaking Search Effort

For more than a week, family members had been urgently searching for a missing Indigenous woman from Riverside County who they claimed was leaving an abusive relationship, and on Sunday morning, they made a heartbreaking find.

Amy Porter, 43, was found dead in a desert area near Interstate 10 in Yucaipa by her family’s search party, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. Porter, a member of the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, was the subject of a Feather Alert this weekend.

The department said that she was last spotted in Lake Elsinore on September 14.

Frustrated by police’ perceived lack of haste, her family launched their search on Sunday morning after hearing allegations that Porter had been involved in a car accident in Yucaipa.

The cause of death is yet unknown. The Sheriff’s Department is investigating the situation, and an autopsy of the deceased is scheduled.

Although family members were pleased that these actions were being taken, they felt her disappearance should have been examined more carefully from the start.

“Unfortunately, authorities haven’t been as helpful as we would like them to be,” Porter’s cousin Angelina Lyons told OnScene.TV on Sunday morning. “We feel like things weren’t taken seriously.”

Lyons, for example, claimed she discovered blood on the mattress and items in Porter’s bedroom, but authorities did not investigate thoroughly.

“Now they want to do their jobs, they want to investigate, want to go to the house,” she told me. “They want to finally take what they have seen. “We knew better.”

Porter’s cousin Shannon Quesada and Lyons said she was trying to flee from danger when she was engaged in an automobile accident.

There have been no arrests made yet. Porter’s boyfriend, whose name remained unknown late Monday, has not been linked to the case. Police took him into jail in Pomona on Friday for an unrelated parole violation, according to local television outlets.

“She was seen running from a hotel that they were both at, on foot, barefoot, running to her Suburban,” according to Quesada.

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