Linnea Lomax Hanged Herself, Her Father Says
PLACERVILLE (CBS13) - Linnea Lomax, the UC Davis student found dead last week near the American River, hanged herself, her father said during a press conference on Tuesday.
Linnea's badly decomposed body was discovered on Friday morning by her mother in dense brush behind a home on Sandburg Way in the Campus Commons area.
Linnea's mother spoke at the press conference describing how she found her daughter's body.
"We stood there and we smelled a bad smell and we were smelling every plant around trying to figure out what it could be," explained an emotional Marianne Lomax.
The smell led her mother to some thick brush underneath a tree near the water. Something told her to keep going.
"I crawled through on my knees and hands and I came to a pretty place right by the river and the river was there and there was 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 we called 911 and that's how it went," she said.
Linnea had been missing since she walked away from an outpatient mental health facility in Sacramento on June 26. Her family said she suffered a breakdown while studying for final exams.
A search party had previously found a notebook belonging to Linnea on the American River near where her body was found.
Even though she's gone, her parents are grateful to have found her body..
"It's tragic, it's unbearable, but the only thing worse would be to go on not knowing," Craig Lomax.
A memorial is planned for Linnea on September 22 at the Grass Valley Community Church in Placerville.
