SAD END
AN engaged couple who disappeared last month were “drunk and speeding” before their car crashed in the woods — and their bodies weren’t found for weeks, according to police.
Stephanie Mayorga, 27, and Paige Escalera, 25, were reported missing on April 18 after they had been missing for three days.
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Surveillance video showed the pair leaving their home in North Carolina in 2013 Dodge Dart.
On May 4, authorities found the vehicle “deep in the woods” off a road and “covered in vegetation” with two “significantly” decomposing bodies inside.
The Wilmington Police Department said at a press conference last week that "alcohol and speed were major factors in the wreck."
On the night of April 15, police said someone called 91 about a car “traveling at a high rate of speed, running through a stop sign” at an intersection a little more than six miles from the women’s apartment.
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The 911 caller said they looked in his passenger’s side rearview mirror and saw the car hitting a wall and crashing, but said they weren't sure where they were because they weren't from the area.
Emergency responders and the 911 caller searched the area, but didn’t find any evidence of a car crash at the time.
But weeks later, police found the 911 call and went back to search the area.
There, they found “no obvious signs of a wreck. There were no broken limbs, no skid marks, and no debris. The only evidence of the crash was a faint tire imprint near the curb, as well as scuff marks on the curb itself.”
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The Dart was found “hidden in an area of thick vegetation, partially submerged in a swamp with only a small section of the roof visible from up above.”
Police said: “Officers had to use a machete to cut a path to the vehicle. In addition, a tow truck was called to remove it, which created the tire tracks, broken limbs, and other obvious disturbances visible in photos taken at the scene after May 4.”
“We can confidently say alcohol and speed were major factors in the wreck,” cops said, before adding the women were traveling between 102 and 103mph before they hit a curb and “went airborne.”
The vehicle collided with a tree 150 feet away from the street, and the crash “happened in the blink of an eye” — as only 0.99 seconds elapsed from the time the car hit the curb to the time of the collision, according to police.
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Investigators found “several open, empty beer bottles” inside their vehicle, and cops determined the women bought a 12-pack of beer that night just before 11pm, in the hour before the crash.
“Surveillance photos also show one of the women holding a beer bottle as they exited their apartment around 9pm that night,” police said.
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Mayorga was driving the car and Escalera was riding as passenger during the crash.
Police said their cause of deaths have been ruled traumatic head and chest injuries from the crash.
Their disappearance was deemed “suspicious,” as all of their belongings were still at home went they went missing, cops said.
They had ordered food that was found on their doorstep the next morning at their Wilmington home they had only lived in for about a week.
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Police were criticized by loved ones of the women, who said authorities weren’t doing enough to find them.
But police insisted “all the normal investigative techniques that we use to find where people have gone and find out their history and what their plans were, aren’t bearing out.”
"This is unusual,” Wilmington Police Captain Thomas Tilmon said, adding: “We have no idea where they went."