By LESLIE STRATMOEN Special to the Star-Tribune with wire reports |
RIVERTON -- Federal and local authorities are investigating the death of a 13-year-old girl whose body was found along a roadside on the Wind River Indian Reservation.
Marisa Spoonhunter's body was found off Givens Road, just east of Ethete. She had been missing for four days.
Authorities would not say how she died. Fremont County Coroner Ed McAuslan said suicide is not being considered as the cause of death.
McAuslan said he won't have details until he sees the results from an autopsy, which [was] scheduled for Friday with a forensic pathologist at the McKee Medical Center in Loveland, Colo.
FBI spokesman Dave Joly in Denver said the bureau [sent] extra investigators to assist its local agents in Lander. The coroner's office, Wind River police and the Bureau of Indian Affairs are assisting in the case.
Spoonhunter's parents, Vern and Bernadette Spoonhunter, had been searching for their daughter since Saturday after the Easter Powwow held at Great Plains Hall in Arapahoe, which is off 17 Mile Road.
Spoonhunter was an eighth-grader at Wyoming Indian Middle School.
(Leslie Stratmoen is news director at KTAK/KVOW Radio in Riverton.)
