A missing Indigenous woman from the Lake Elsinore area has been found dead following a search organized by her friends and family.
The family of Amy Porter, 43, said she had been missing since Sept. 15 following a major car accident in a desert area near Wildwood Canyon Road just off the 10 freeway in the Yucaipa area.
She was found dead on Sunday, according to a release from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.
Friends and family said they had found fresh blood on a mattress and clothes in her home at the time of her disappearance.
The California Highway Patrol issued a Feather Alert for Porter, who was a member of the Morongo Band of Mission Indians Tribe. The alert is a new type of statewide notification that is intended to specifically help find missing Indigenous people.
The search party found Porter’s body after about an hour in a ravine.
Family members told Onscene.Media that they were grateful for the alert system, but that investigators were unwilling to listen to their concerns or examine valuable evidence, and that other bureaucratic delays sacrificed valuable time.
Shannon Quezada, a cousin of Amy Porter’s who was part of the search party, said that many of the delays were avoidable, such as when they asked law enforcement for drones to search the region. Their request was declined because they said there was no probable cause, she said.
“They were able to search family members’ homes without probable cause,” Quezada pointed out.
She said she believed that Porter was in the process fleeing an abusive relationship when she was killed.
“It’s just frustrating that now it’s being investigated, and it didn’t have to be an investigation like this,” said Quezada. “They could have done something to help us prior to this.”
Typically, women are at the most risk of being murdered by abusive intimate partners as they are in the process of ending a relationship or just after leaving.
The Feather Alert was codified into California state law in 2022 and launched in January 2023. It is California’s first legislative measure to combat the ongoing Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples crisis.
