A woman who was kidnapped at a Montana rest stop in broad daylight was able to talk with her husband and daughter by cellphone several times and even talked with police, but by the time investigators found her, she was dead, authorities said.
Rita Maze, 47, was driving home to Great Falls after having visited relatives in Helena, Montana, when she was accosted at a rest stop on Interstate 15 on Tuesday morning, Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo C. Dutton said.
Maze, of Great Falls, called her husband Tuesday evening saying that she had been struck on the head and was in the trunk of her car, Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo Dutton said.
She stayed on the phone from the vehicle's trunk, talking to her husband and to a Helena police officer as the signal faded in and out on the way to Spokane, Dutton told NBC News.
"She didn't know her location, but she was able to talk to them over her cellphone, sporadically, as coverage faded in and out," Dutton said.
The Spokane County Sheriff's Office was able to track her movements through signals from local cell towers.
Daughter Rochelle Maze told the Great Falls Tribune her mother was "hysterical" and hard to understand when they spoke on the phone for about 10 minutes.
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"I told her that I loved her," Rochelle Maze said. "That's the last thing she heard."
The phone then went dead or lost a signal, and the two were unable to reach each other again.
Law enforcement tracked the cellphone to help locate her vehicle with the help of the license plate that had been captured on a license plate reader near Post Falls, Idaho.
Her body was found in the trunk of her Pontiac Grand Prix just after midnight Wednesday, 250 miles away in a parking lot outside Spokane, Washington, International Airport, authorities said. The cause of death was not released.
A motive, information on any possible suspects, and detail on how the kidnapping occurred were not immediately available. But Dutton said there was a person of interest in the case and authorities were looking at surveillance video from a convenience store.
"It's too early to tell," Dutton said, but "we would suspect now" that it was an random attack.
Maze was a longtime cook at Morningside Elementary School in Great Falls, the Great Falls Tribune reported.
Bill Salonen, the school's former principal, told NBC News she "had such a positive presence." on the students.
A GoFundMe page was set up Wednesday to assist Maze's family.
