For months, Marianne Lomax had been looking for her missing 19-year-old daughter, Linnea Lomax, who disappeared from an outpatient mental clinic back in June without a trace. Together with her husband, the rest of her family and volunteers from the KlaasKids Foundation, they searched different areas in Sacramento with no luck. And then, last Friday, as they were searching an area near a river close to the clinic where she was last seen, Marianne Lomax made the shocking discovery of her daughter' Linnea's decomposing body hanging from a tree.
This is how Marianne Lomax described that moment as reported by the Huffington Post:
I came to a pretty place right by the river, and the river was there and there was really nothing else there, and then I saw my daughter. I looked for two seconds, and I knew that was her. I ran up screaming and called 911.
I can't even begin to imagine what this poor mom must have felt when she made the gruesome discovery. Linnea's body was so badly decomposed that the time of her death or its cause is still not known. But a mom can recognize her child no matter what, and that's what happened in this case.
Read more in ¿Qué más?: What would drive a 7-year-old boy to commit suicide?
Linnea was a student at the University of California, Davis, where she had just finished her freshman year with a 4.0 and hoped to get a degree in nursing. Unfortunately, she shortly after, she suffered a mental breakdown and spent a week at a mental facility last spring.
I was so saddened by this story because I don't think most of us know enough about mental illnesses and how vulnerable so many of us are to suffer from them. I feel terrible for this family and their loss and especially for the horrific way in which they finally put closure to the case of her missing daughter.
Image courtesy Lomax family
