Whitney Heichel; Missing Woman's Cell Phone Discovered?
The search continues for Whitney Heichel, the 21-year-old Oregon barista who went missing earlier this week.
A cell phone was discovered in the bushes of a neighborhood apartment complex on Thursday by a group of children playing in the area, according to the Daily Mail.
The phone, which authorities have yet to confirm as Heichel's, was found with an unanswered text message that asked if she was okay along with a screensaver showing the missing woman's picture.
April Fletcher, one of the parents of the kids, told ABC News: "I was pretty shocked. I mean I knew right away ... I recognized the face," April Fletcher, the mother of one the girls, told ABC News.
Fletcher continued:
"[The kids] started flipping through some of the text messages ... from [her] uncle, and there was one from Scott that was trying to find out 'where are you. Are you OK?' So I mean it just kind of confirmed it to me that it was her cell phone."
The Troutdale Terrace Apartments where the phone was found is about four miles from Heichel's Gresham, Ore. home.
Lorelei Ritmiller, mother of the missing woman, urged the Gresham city council on Thursday to keep searching for her daughter.
"She's gentle. She's compassionate ... She's this compassionate laughing person. Her heart is as big as the sun ... This is just a great human being. This is a person you'd think no one could ever hurt," said Ritmiller.
Heichel's mother said the last time she saw her daughter was Monday night. The missing woman disappeared Tuesday and didn't arrive at her morning shift at Starbucks.
Police are investigating a gas station surveillance video that shows Heichel's black Ford Explorer that was taken around 9 a.m. the morning she vanished.
Clinton Heichel, the missing woman's husband, reported his wife missing at 9:56 a.m. when her supervisor called saying she never came to work.
"I called her several times," Heichel said Wednesday. "I texted her several times and then actually at about 9:30ish, her phone got to the point where you would call and it went straight to voicemail."
Heichel's vehicle that appeared on the surveillance video was found in a Walmart parking lot hours later. The Ford Explorer was abandoned and the passenger window was broken.
