The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office helicopter that flew over Scottsdale’s McCormick Ranch on Aug. 30 wasn’t looking for a truck. The crew was working an unrelated call. Somewhere along the way, someone aboard looked down into one of the neighborhood’s residential lakes and saw the shape of a vehicle under the water.
That glance may end up closing an 11-year-old missing-person case from New Mexico.
Scottsdale police said in statements released to local media last week that officers went to the lake, near McCormick Parkway and Hayden Road, and put a drone up to confirm what the helicopter crew had spotted. It was a vehicle. The sheriff’s office dive team was called in to haul it out. When the vehicle was opened, investigators found human remains inside.
Officers then ran the registration. According to police, it was tied to a missing-person report filed in New Mexico in 2015.
Video: Arizona’s Family (3TV / CBS 5) via YouTube
What the New Mexico record says
Scottsdale police have not publicly named the registered owner. Phoenix TV station Arizona’s Family reported that the truck belonged to Andrew Montoya, and New Mexico’s own records line up with that.
The New Mexico Department of Public Safety’s missing-person database lists Andrew D. Montoya as last seen in Santa Fe on March 22, 2015. He was 41. The case belongs to New Mexico State Police in Santa Fe. The record describes him as 5-foot-6, about 160 pounds, with brown hair, brown eyes and a tattoo on his right arm.
It also lists the vehicle he was associated with: a maroon Chevrolet Avalanche carrying Arizona license plates.
A photo the sheriff’s office released of the recovered vehicle, taken at night on the lakeshore with a winch cable still attached, shows a dark red crew-cab pickup with a short bed. Authorities have not publicly confirmed its make and model.
Santa Fe to a Scottsdale lake
Nobody has explained this part yet. The state record’s last sighting puts Montoya in Santa Fe, more than 400 miles by road from McCormick Ranch. His truck ended up in a lake in the middle of a long-established Scottsdale neighborhood of homes, offices and a golf club, just off one of the area’s main parkways.
Investigators have not said when the truck went into the water, how it got there, or whether it had been there for anything close to the full 11 years. None of that is public, and the answer could change how the whole case reads.
What police have said is that there is no evidence of foul play at this point.
Where the case stands
The remains have not been identified. They were turned over to the Maricopa County Office of the Medical Examiner, which is working with Scottsdale detectives to confirm who the person was and how they died. Police have cautioned that the forensic work will take time.
Until that identification comes back, the link between the truck and Montoya’s case is a link between a registration and a missing-person file. It is not yet a confirmed identity, and as of Sept. 29, Montoya’s entry was still posted in New Mexico’s active missing-person database.
Anyone with information about Montoya’s disappearance can reach the New Mexico Department of Public Safety missing-person hotline at 1-800-457-3463 or New Mexico State Police in Santa Fe at (505) 827-9300, the contacts listed on his case record. Families searching for someone can also check the federal National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, which lets the public compare missing-person and unidentified-remains cases across states.
For now, one of the most important leads in an 11-year-old case came from a helicopter crew that was there for something else and happened to look down.
Should cities and homeowners associations with residential lakes scan them for submerged vehicles every so often, or is a find like this too rare to justify the cost?
Related: What happens to a car after water gets inside it