The Cochise County Sheriff’s Office continues the search for 86-year-old Mary Black of St. David. Ms. Black has been missing from her residence in St. David since Sunday, November 24, 2013, where she was able to obtain the vehicle keys for a 1991 Ford Explorer and drove away.
The vehicle was recovered in a remote area south of Arizona City on Saturday November 30, 2013, and Ms. Black was not located within a three mile ground search radius and many additional miles in an aerial search.
The immediate area around the vehicle only had one set of foot tracks leading away from the driver’s door and to a dirt roadway nearby. The roadway had signs of a vehicle that was apparently headed in one direction and then turned around. The foot signs disappear near the tire tracks at a fence line. This information leads investigators to believe that Ms. Black may have had someone stop and give her a ride away from the area.
The Cochise County Sheriff’s Office, along with the Pima County Sheriff’s Office and Pinal County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue Teams, will be in the area where the vehicle was located again on Saturday December 7, 2013, to expand the search grid.
Sheriff Mark Dannels said today, “Any time you have a case of this magnitude, you exhaust all leads and backtrack to cover them all again multiple times. In the case of an 86-year-old woman who has been a beacon for so many people in our county, and who is missing, we cannot and will not give up on this investigation until we are able to locate Ms. Black.”