SUMTER, S.C. — The missing person posters are still hanging outside the Sumter Stop gas station where 23-year-old Rebecca Danielle Brown disappeared a week ago.
Officers say the body of Brown was discovered Tuesday.
Her disappearance is a moment Teresa Griffin says she won’t soon forget.
“When you get that call and it’s your family, it’s literally, the nightmare began,” Griffin said. “I don’t know of any way to put it; it was a nightmare.”
Griffin says Brown was her niece.
“She was a very bubbly, bubbly person,” Griffin said. “She enjoyed life.”
According to police reports, Brown had been celebrating St. Patrick’s Day when she and others stopped for gas.
She went inside, but never returned, with one witness telling police he saw someone who looked like her wandering away from the store.
While searches by air, foot and canine took place in the days that followed, Brown was found days later, just minutes away from the place she went missing in a grassy area by a passerby on S. Guignard Drive.
Police are now investigating her death as a hit-and-run accident based on the autopsy findings and returned to the scene Wednesday evening to canvass the area.
“Standing watching my brother while the dogs and the helicopters and drones were out searching for her I mean it’s just no way to explain that,” Griffin said. “I pray for every family that has to go through that. It’s literally awful.”
For now, they’re hoping for more answers as the pain remain raw.