A Korean family of three traveled to Arizona on a trip to the Grand Canyon. They were last seen on March 13, suddenly disappearing without a trace. Their last known GPS location pinpoints them close to a multi-vehicle crash that took place the very same day and at the exact same time when the incident happened.
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According to AZFamiliy, 54-year-old Junghee Kim, 59-year-old Taehee Kim, and 33-year-old Jiyeon Lee were finishing up their trip to the Grand Canyon and were traveling to Las Vegas. Jiyeon is Taehee's daughter and Junghee's niece.
"We have visitors from all over the world that come here," Jon Paxton with the Coconino Couty Sheriff's Office said. "But yeah it is a little unusual to have three go missing at the same time."
Concerns began when the three women missed their flight to San Francisco scheduled on Monday, March 17. A day later, the Korean Consulate in Los Angeles alerted authorities. Whether they were flying from Vegas to San Francisco I don't know," Paxton added. "Maybe they were driving to San Francisco on the 14th or 15th, it's hard to say."
Multi-Vehicle Crash
Reportedly, they were driving a rental 2024 BMW on March 13. They were driving westbound on Interstate 40 at 3:27 p.m. That day, coincidentally, just a mile away from their last recorded GPS location, a multi-vehicle crash took place in the westbound lanes of I-40. The crash, which involved 20 vehicles, caused the deaths of two people. As per the Daily Mail, the victims were identified as Juan Beltran Sanchez and Evelyn Davis.
Authorities have not confirmed whether the Korean family was involved in the multi-vehicle crash. As per Fox 10, the Coconino County Sheriff's Office has not been able to ping the BMW's location ever since.
"It was our concern that because of the weather conditions on that day and that major accident, their GPS may have rerouted them," the sheriff's office told the outlet. "And if you've ever traveled up in northern Arizona, when you get rerouted, sometimes GPS will reroute you out into a forest service road without knowing that weather conditions are harsh."
Isn't this why we have helicopters. wtf
I'm glad he didn't kill someone else.