A Montana sheriff leading the search for a missing woman who disappeared while horseback riding provided a tragic update Tuesday, as deputies continued to search a body of water where they believe she may have fallen.
Meghan Rouns, 27, went horseback riding on a trail at McMaster Hills Recreation Center near Helena on Friday, but her family reported her missing when she didn’t return home six hours later.
Since then, officers and volunteers have been frantically searching for any sign of the married woman, and on Saturday they found her horse and a phone with a tracker in a saddlebag.
But as officials continued to examine a portion of the Missouri River on Tuesday, Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo Dutton said their efforts had become more of a “recovery phase” than a rescue mission.
“There have been no signs of life since Friday, so the chances of life are a very, very low percentage,” he said. he told the US Sun.. “But we’ll keep looking.”
Meghan Rouns, 27, went horseback riding on a trail at McMaster Hills Recreation Center near Helena on Friday, but her family reported her missing when she didn’t return home six hours later.
Rouns was last seen by her family leaving her home around 2pm on Friday, October 4.
A photo was posted to his Snapchat account around 4:20 p.m., according to Lewis & Clark sheriff’s deputies.
Authorities say Nothing has been heard from her since.
She was then reported missing around 8pm after failing to return home, leaving police with a window of three hours and forty minutes in which she could have disappeared.
Her father said she had been traveling in the Eagle Bay area east of Helena, west of the Missouri River.
He said she was seen wearing jeans, a black shirt, possibly a gray hoodie and a cap, and only told the family she was going horseback riding in the area.
Her father said she had been traveling in the Eagle Bay area east of Helena, west of the Missouri River.
He had only told his relatives where he was going that day.
Over the next few days, several law enforcement agencies joined the search for the missing woman and eventually found Rouns’ horse on the Hauser Lake Hill, which has become authorities’ primary search area.
The Helena Police Department’s Malmstrom Air Force Base even deployed a helicopter Sunday, as teams of search dogs arrived.
Dozens of volunteers also toured the recreational area on foot and on horseback, and at the same time, a robot-operated vehicle and divers were seen combing the waters where Roun’s horse was found.
On Tuesday, the sheriff’s department sent divers to the section of the Missouri River that Sheriff Leo Dutton called an “area of interest.”
Authorities now believe Rouns may have been thrown from her horse amid Friday’s strong winds and fell into the river. She didn’t know how to swim, Dutton. he told the Independent.
‘We think something happened that scared the horse into the water. We just don’t know what it is yet,” the sheriff said, adding that he has ruled out foul play.
The sheriff went on to note that search crews discovered his baseball cap upstream from where a GPS tracker and cell phone were found in a saddlebag, which they had used to reconstruct Rouns’ activity at the recreation area.
“It kind of confirms my postulation that there was a significant wind event that happened just as it hit the riverbank,” Dutton said.
“The hat was in the water,” he explained. “We think it was due to the strong winds.”
Volunteers also tour the recreational facilities on foot and on horseback.
On Tuesday, the sheriff’s department sent divers to the section of the Missouri River that Dutton called an “area of interest.”
“We covered half of it yesterday and we will continue searching today,” he promised Tuesday, noting that horsemen and volunteers were still searching the land around the river.
The sheriff is now urging volunteers not to interfere with deputies’ search of the waters and has instead asked locals to focus on dense brush areas away from the shoreline.