A single mother from the San Francisco-area who disappeared eight months ago after reportedly embarking on a 500-mile “pandemic road trip” across California is dead, Fox News has learned, after authorities confirmed human remains found in a rural, desert area of San Bernardino County, just north of Joshua Tree National Park, have been positively identified.
Hikers discovered skeletal remains on Jan. 31 in the vicinity of Danby Road and Amboy Road in Wonder Valley, Calif., a sparsely populated unincorporated community in the Morongo Basin of Southern California’s High Desert region, about 10 miles east of Twentynine Palms, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said.
The remains have since been identified as Erika Ashley Lloyd, her family publicly announced on Facebook Thursday, after authorities delivered the news.
A forensic odontologist used dental records to make the identification, the sheriff’s department said.
The cause and manner of death have not been determined at this time, Cindy Bachman, a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino Co. Sheriff-Coroner, told Fox News via email on Sunday.
The investigation remains ongoing.
“It is with a heavy heart to announce that these remains have been identified by San Bernardino County’s Sheriff Department as my sister Erika,” her brother, Colin Lloyd, wrote in a Feb. 18 announcement on the “Bringing Erika Home” Facebook page.
“There is no easy way for me to tell you all this and there’s no easy way for any of us to receive it,” he continued.
“My wish is that we can all lean in a little closer, hold each other up, and remind each other more often that we’re here for one another with open arms and endless love; it’s what she would have wanted; it’s the spirit of who she was.”
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