Coconino County Sheriff's Office in Arizona has stopped its search for a daughter, her aunt, and her mother who disappeared after visiting the Grand Canyon while touring the United States by car, according to law enforcement.
The family, made up of 23-year-old Jiyeon Lee, 69-year-old Taehee Kim, and 64-year-old Junghee Kim, were on the road in a rented white 2024 BMW with the California license plate 9KHN768.
The tourists from South Korea were reported missing on March 18 to the Coconino County Sheriff's Office by the South Korean consulate after they did not appear for their March 17 return flight out of San Francisco, according to Coconino County Sheriff's Office's public information officer (PIO) Jon Paxton.
Law enforcement has stopped searching but Paxton told NTD that they will continue to monitor for updates from the GPS signal of the missing vehicle obtained from the car rental company and follow up on leads or tips they receive.
"We had our search and rescue team involved for three days," he said. "We used the Arizona Highway Patrol, what we call Rangers, and their helicopters."
NTD has also learned that the car’s navigation system revealed that the trio were driving westbound on Interstate 40 on March 13 around the same time winter weather caused multiple vehicles to collide and pile up on the freeway’s westbound lanes.
"We have not had any more pings on the GPS of the rented vehicle or their cellphones since March 13," Paxton said. 'They were traveling on the West side of the highway."
The Arizona Department of Public Safety (ADOPS) further revealed that a fire from the collision quickly spread and burned for more than 20 hours until firefighters, state troopers, personnel from the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT), and tow truck operators contained the fire, provided care to the injured, and eventually cleared the scene.
"There are multiple vehicles in a tow yard in the Ash Fork area that are unidentified right now," Paxton told NTD. "That fire burned for many, many hours and those vehicles are just not easily identified. DPS is working to identify those vehicles and the passengers in them."
The Korean family's rental car pinged one mile from the grisly accident site, which involved multiple vehicles, including tractor-trailers that failed to properly stop or slow down, according to the Arizona Department of Public Safety.
"We don't know but there is a belief that maybe the missing family were in that accident," Paxton added.
Multiple passenger cars were rear-ended or pushed underneath crashed tractor-trailers.
The two people who died have been identified as 55-year-old Juan Beltran Sanchez of Chino Valley, Arizona, and 64-year-old Evelyn Davis of Ganado, Arizona.