Snapchat video leads deputies to body of missing Clark County woman

A Snapchat video led investigators to the C.J. Brown Reservoir in Buck Creed State Park early Monday, where they recovered the body of a missing 74-year-old Springfield woman.

Clark County Sheriff’s Office divers pulled Eloise Briggs and her submerged SUV from reservoir about 9:30 a.m.

Briggs had been the subject of an endangered missing adult alert issued after she left her home about noon Saturday and didn’t return. She suffered from medical problems and needed to be on oxygen, the alert said.

However, the cause and manner of Briggs’ death are pending, officials said.

“We have recovered a body inside,” Lt. Christopher Clark of the Clark County Sheriff’s Office said Monday.

Clark said his office was first notified of the vehicle inside the water at 6:30 a.m. Monday. But he said reports surfaced on social media Sunday with videos of the vehicle.

Lydia Lanum said she and her mother Karen were the ones who alerted the sheriff’s office of the video.

“(Sunday) evening I was sitting on my phone on Snapchat just going through random stories, and I popped up on (a friend’s) story that he (saw) a car, so I text him and they said they were just skateboarding and they didn’t know what to do,” she said.

So she saved the video and showed it to her mother, Karen.

“Just seeing someone’s car in the water just makes me want to wonder like, ‘is everything OK, like, is somebody hurts?’ I get worried,” the younger Lanum said.

Karen Lanum said she didn’t think much of the video initially. But then she remembered seeing a missing person’s report earlier in the day, and the vehicle in the video fit the description of Briggs’ car. So she immediately called 911.

Sheriff’s deputies have launched an investigator to determine how Briggs’ car landed in the water, Clark said.

“We have more questions than answers at this point,” he said.

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