ABERDEEN — Searchers on Wednesday found the body of an Illinois woman who was missing after a sport utility vehicle carrying four people crashed more than a week ago in Mississippi.
The body of Amber Smith, 24, of Streator, Illinois, was found at the Aberdeen Lock and Dam on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, said Carolyn Green, the coroner of Lee County, Mississippi.
Smith was ejected during the crash and died of multiple traumas, Green said. A creek had taken the body about 40 miles from the crash site, she said.
Two men and two women had headed to Florida from Illinois on May 26. On May 30, a fisherman found a blue Chevrolet SUV crashed in a creek under an Interstate 22 bridge in the northeast Mississippi city of Tupelo. The bodies of two men and one woman were found that day.
Because the two women who were traveling together had similar facial features, authorities had trouble identifying the body of the first woman found.
Green originally publicly identified the body found May 30 as Smith. However, after speaking with relatives of the travelers, Green ordered DNA tests to confirm that the first body was that of the other woman in the SUV, Heather Uhren, 25, of Streator.
Green said Uhren’s family provided information about jewelry she was wearing, and the description matched jewelry on the first body. Green said Wednesday that she is waiting for DNA test results from the Mississippi Crime Lab.
Green said the men killed in the wreck were Sean Haygood, 30, of Streator, and Terrance Wege Jr., 29, of Ottawa, Illinois.
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