The human remains discovered at a recently sold home in Colorado have been identified as a 16-year-old girl who had been missing since 2005.
On Friday, Oct. 11, the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office confirmed in a press release that the human head and hands that were discovered in the home in Grand Junction in January belong to 16-year-old Amanda Overstreet, who “has not been seen or heard from since April 2005.”
“Through DNA testing, the victim is identified as Amanda Leariel Overstreet,” the sheriff’s office wrote. “[Overstreet] was the biological daughter of the previous owner of the home. The circumstances surrounding her disappearance remain under investigation, as well as ongoing forensic testing of evidence. There is no record that Amanda Overstreet was ever reported missing.”
According to the release, deputies first “found the head and hands of a human, [which] had been discovered in a freezer by someone who arrived to claim the free appliance offered by the new owner of the recently sold home,” during their initial investigation in January.
Later, the sheriff’s office confirmed that the case was being characterized as a homicide.
The sheriff’s office also reported in July that the Mesa County Coroner’s Office had conducted an autopsy on Overstreet’s body, but further information about her cause of death and the active investigation was not available at the time.
Back in January, neighbor Sam Troester told local NBC affiliate KUSA that the previous residents of the home moved out the morning of Jan. 12, and the new owners arrived later that same day to clean up the place.
“It turns out that the new owners of the house posted online that they were looking to sell a bunch of the garbage that was left behind, scrap metal and things that people could repurpose,” Troester recalled, “and there was a deep freezer that was posted up for grabs.”
A Mesa County Sheriff’s Office vehicle.
Mesa County Sheriff’s Office
Troester added that the people who dropped by to pick up the freezer visited her home after and asked if they could use her bathroom.
“I let them in and cautiously I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ ” Troester told KUSA. “And they continued to tell me that they opened the freezer to empty it so they could transport it and they said a head fell out. A human head!”
The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office has been working with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation on the case, local outlet KJCTreported, adding that Mesa County Sheriff’s Office communications officer Wendy Likes said that Overstreet was “just a child” at the time of her death.
“I mean, she was a child. She was 16 years old. She’s still a child,” Likes told the outlet.
The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately reply to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
