The body of missing 21-year-old Arielle Valdes has been found.
On Monday, the Lee County Sheriff's Office confirmed female remains found along the Caloosahatchee River in North Fort Myers, Florida, are presumed to be Arielle's.
There is no preliminary evidence to indicate foul play, authorities said.
"Ari you were to good for this world," Arielle's sister, Isabella Hergert, wrote in a heartbreaking Facebook post shortly before the sheriff's announcement. "I love you and I will see you again in every life time. You are a piece of my soul that I will always look for."
"Thank you so much for the love we have received from the community. Please give us privacy while we grieve our angel," wrote Hergert.
Arielle was last seen leaving her Fort Myers, Florida, residence Wednesday evening, according to the LCSO.
Family members said Arielle was an avid runner and was training for a marathon, but it's unclear if that was the reason she left her home – without her phone or Apple Watch – at the time of her disappearance.
"She has been having panic attacks as of very recently and has not been speaking much the last week," Hergert wrote on social media over the weekend. "We were going to have her go to therapy, which she agreed to."
"We are worried she has been hiding and is feeling like we will be mad at her," Hergert surmised.
However, a separate post on a Facebook page dedicated to finding Arielle, clarified her mental state at the time she went missing remains unknown.
"... she has no history of any mental conditions that would cause this behavior. We do not know her reasoning for leaving the house," the update read, in part.
"We can't eat, sleep for the past 48 hours," Arielle's mother, Priscilla Coutinho, told WBBH-TV Sunday. "My daughter is my heart. I have two other kids. They also are my heart. But guess what? No one's going to take her place. I want her to bring her back home, please. I just want to bring her back home."
Arielle was last spotted on surveillance footage, wearing a beige hoodie, gym shorts, and black and white converse, running southbound on US-41 in North Fort Myers, moments before she vanished.
Originally published in Lawyer Herald
© 2024 Latin Times. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
