A search involving homicide investigators was continuing in and around Joshua Tree National Park on Thursday for the missing 19-year-old pregnant wife of a Marine stationed in Twentynine Palms, authorities said.
Erin Corwin was reported missing Sunday by her husband, who was identified by the Riverside Press-Enterprise as Wayne Corwin, a corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps.
There were “definite suspicious circumstances” surrounding the teen’s disappearance, a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department told the newspaper.
Corwin had left her home at the Twentynine Palms U.S. Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center base early Saturday to see if the national park was a good place to take her mother on a planned visit, the spokeswoman told KTLA Wednesday.
Her mother, Lore Heavilin, had planned to make the trip from Tennessee to celebrate Corwin’s upcoming 20th birthday, she told KESQ, a Palm Springs television station. Instead, she arrived to wait for word of her daughter’s whereabouts.
“You feel like you’re walking in a nightmare,” Heavilin said.
Corwin’s blue 2013 Toyota Corolla was found in Twentynine Palms Monday but the discovery gave no indication about her “direction of travel or current whereabouts,” a Sheriff’s Department news release stated.
On Thursday, a dozen search and rescue volunteers were looking for Corwin on the ground and a Sheriff’s Department helicopter was searching overhead in and around the national park, an updated release stated. Sheriff’s homicide investigators were on scene as well.
Corwin was described as three months pregnant, white, 5 feet 2 inches tall, 120 pounds, with brown hair and blue eyes.
She has no history of “medical and/or psychological issues,” the Sheriff’s Department stated.
A Facebook page called Locate Erin was set up in support of the search effort.
Anyone with information was asked to call the Sheriff’s Department at 909-387-3589 or dispatch at 909-387-8313. Anonymous tipsters may call 800-782-7463 or go to wetip.com.
KTLA’s Anthony Kurzweil contributed to this article.