The vehicle belonging to the Sacramento woman was found in the central California canal last month and the body of an adult and infant was found inside, police said Sunday.
The Fresno County Sheriff’s Office said last month that Whisper Owen, 36, and her 8-month-old daughter, Sandra McCarty, appeared on July 15 after visiting her family in Fresno.
The pair returned home in the 2006 Chevrolet Trail Blazers silver medal and were last captured on traffic cameras in Atwater, north of Fresno, hours after they left.
Relatives told CNN on July 28 that the family had been expecting their Elk Grove in Sacramento County but they didn't realize that Owen was missing for three days due to poor communication.
A spokesman for the San Joaquin Sheriff's Office said a nonprofit diving team found a vehicle that matched Irving's description about 45 minutes north of Atwater.
The spokesman said the sheriff's office and the dive team went to the scene and found the bodies of adults and babies in the vehicle. The medical examiner's office will formally identify the body, but the missing woman's family was at the dive site and determined the vehicle was hers, a spokesperson said.
A spokesman for the Fresno Police Department said the vehicle was found while searching the waterways in the Highway 120 and the Victory Road area of San Joaquin County, which was responsible for the investigation.
Police said in a statement that the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office and the California Highway Patrol are investigating the vehicle’s final result in the water.
“We have sent two Fresno PD-detectives to the scene of Highway 120 and Victory Road to continue our investigation and to relate to the Sheriff's Department for details on recovery,” the statement continued.
“We continue to support Whisper and Sandra’s families through our detectives and will also provide more support to our families through our Fresno police and fire priests.”
Her mother, Vickie Torres, had a routine checkup on the baby in Fresno last month. They left the city around 5pm, hoping to send it home before dark (about 158 miles).
Her brother told CNN last month that when she wasn't home, her partner thought she had stayed behind to help her mother clean up the house she just bought. Richard Owen said her partner didn’t realize what was wrong until the next Saturday, when the two usually spent a weekend together.
Irving's partner contacted her family—it was when they realized she had been missing for three days—and her mother reported she was missing from the Fresno County Sheriff's Office.