MANORVILLE, New York (WABC) — The search for a missing woman in Suffolk County turned into a murder investigation after police found a dead body while scouring the woods on Wednesday afternoon.
Kathleen Harrison Trent, a 63-year-old mother and grandmother, was reported missing by her son back on January 29. She was last seen at her home on Forge Road in Riverhead.
Kelly Turbush recalled reacting to her god sister’s disappearance.
“I thought it was fake. I thought I was dreaming, you know, and then I called her son and I asked him, is it true? And, you know, he said yes,” Turbush said. “He said they tried calling her and she wasn’t picking up, and that wasn’t like her, which it wasn’t.”
Two weeks later, while searching a wooded area on Connecticut Avenue near River Road in Manorville, an unidentified woman was found dead by police.
Turbush tells Eyewitness News she fears the worst for someone who she says has a heart of gold.
“She didn’t have a bad bone in her body. Anybody who knew her loved her, anybody. She came in contact would if they needed anything. If she could give, she would,” Turbush said.
Trent’s friends, including Tanya Burriss, say she worked as a security guard at the popular Riverhead Raceway, and that everyone in the community has been looking for her and praying for her and her family.
“Oh, God, I was just destroyed. I was like, oh lord, you know, let everything be fine, because that’s what we all wish, that everything is fine,” Burriss said.
“We got to remember her as she was. She was a good person, good kind person.”
The medical examiner’s office is working to determine the identity of the woman found here in the woods as well as the cause of death. At this point in the investigation, officials say the woman’s death appears to be criminal in nature.
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