Investigators are searching for a missing person in connection with the fire. The South Dakota Attorney General's Office says 16 year old Jasmine Guevara of Mitchell is missing. She was last seen Tuesday night in a 1999 green Chevy Malibu.
The burning car was also discovered Tuesday night by a Hanson county couple who lived near the scene authorities have been investigating. A black hole is burned in the tree-line near the rural Hanson county field where they found the car.
"When we drove in the field all of a sudden I said, oh my god there is a car burning up," witness Judi Bartscher said. Bartscher lives in the home right next to the tree-line with her husband Roger. They discovered the flames just before ten Tuesday night and called 911, but the fire turned out to be more serious than just trees going up in smoke. The Bartschers discovered a car, and investigators found something else.
"When they lifted the car up, the trunk, they found the remains of a body in there," Bartscher said.
That sparked an investigation that blocked off rural roads for miles around Wednesday. A mobile command post was set up and the Division of Criminal Investigation was called in to look for clues.
"I see they were walking the ditches and looking everything over out here, they didn't want anybody out here," Roger Bartscher said.
A fork lift entered the closed off area around three Wednesday afternoon and loaded the charred car into a trailer. Authorities didn't leave the scene until five Wednesday night.
The car was wedged so far in the burnt out tree-line that investigators actually had to cut some of the trees down just to get the car out.
"It's just something you hope doesn't happen any place, but when it happens in your yard it's mind boggling," Judi Bartscher said.
And as the Bartschers look at the charred trees all they can think of are the people involved.
"All night long all I could think about is there's somebody's child is laying in that trunk. Whether it's an adult child or who it is. It's someone's child, it's a family member. Things like that just shouldn't happen," Bartscher said.
And now investigators and the community are trying to figure out why it happened.
About an hour before the fire started the Bartschers say a neighbor saw a suspicious vehicle with two people in the area and wrote down the license plate number. It could be valuable information since the license plates were also burnt in the fire.
If you have any information on Guevara's disappearance you should call the Mitchell Police Department at 605-995-8400.
