Human Remains Believed To Be Missing Gwinnett Woman's

DAHLONEGA, GA — Investigators have found human remains believed to be those of a missing Gwinnett County woman whose car went off the side of a north Georgia mountain.

Tosha Reed Herron, 36, has been missing since October. Investigators soon found her car in a ravine in Lavonia, up Interstate 85 in northeast Georgia's Lumpkin County. But no body had ever been discovered, leading family members to hope she'd escaped the crash.

On Thursday, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Lumpkin County Sheriff's Office — in coordination with the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office — conducted a large-scale search of woods near where the car was found on October 12.

Friday afternoon, the GBI announced that preliminary results from its medical examiner's lab indicated that remains found during that search are Herron's.

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The search was expanded into the Chestatee Wildlife Management area, including areas that law enforcement had not searched before.

During the search, Gwinnett County investigators also found a boot that matches another that Herron was believed to have been wearing at the time of the accident.

The human remains were collected by a GBI crime scene specialist and transported to the GBI Medical Examiner's office for examination and identification.

Family members have said that, on October 7, Herron was planning to visit with friends in Blue Ridge. According to the original missing-person report in Gwinnett County, she dropped off her two children in Lawrenceville with her estranged husband at about 6 p.m. that day.

The two had a verbal argument and she drove away, the husband told police. She was first reported missing by her father on October 9.

After the wrecked car was found, family members feared that Herron may have been abducted by someone after the crash, or that she was somewhere and didn't know who she was. During months of searching, law enforcement received multiple tips that she may have been spotted, including at least one report from Gainesville.

Photo courtesy Lumpkin County Sheriff's Office