The mother of a man who was missing for weeks and whose body was later found in an underground irrigation system believes police could have found him sooner.
“Nobody cared enough to look for them,” Beverly Stafford said of her son James and his girlfriend Annie Warren.
Gila River Police on February 7 found Warren’s body after the couple crashed near 79th Avenue and Baseline Road. Both James and Annie were ejected from the vehicle after rollover crash, Beverly said.
There was no sign of James at the scene, police said at the time. Investigators asked the public to be on the lookout for James, and put out information that he might have been hurt in the crash.
James’s body was found February 24 in an underground aqueduct near the crash scene.
"We were hard-pressed to get [police] to do anything but watch Facebook and make phone calls,” Beverly said of the investigation.
Before the discovery of James’s body, police said they had searched the area surrounding the crash scene.
An after-hours email Friday seeking comment from the Gila River Police Department was not returned.
James leaves behind a seven-year-old son, James’s mother said.
