RecordNet.com
Sacramento – A body found in a submerged car in the Delta on Wednesday may be that of a Lodi transgender woman missing for more than a year.
Ed Smith, Sacramento County’s assistant coroner, said the car was registered to Alicia Sandoval, 44, who was last seen leaving a Thornton bar on March 27, 2005, after arguing with friends. The car was found west of Thornton in Georgianna Slough, a waterway between the Sacramento and Mokelumne rivers south of Walnut Grove.
A diver hired to find a motor that had fallen off a boat found Sandoval’s car and the remains, Smith said. Medical examiners will use dental records to see if the body found in the Mazda is Sandoval’s, he added.
Lodi police had considered her disappearance suspicious. She was intoxicated when she left the Las Lulas bar at 2 a.m. and never returned to her home on North Church Street. In the months before her disappearance, her 1997 Mazda 626 was stolen and, after it was recovered, its tires were punctured.
Sandoval was born in Nayarit, Mexico, in 1960 and moved to the United States around 1985.
She also went by the name Ofelia Santoyo.