Minnesota investigators say they’ve recovered a car and two bodies in a pond amid their frantic search for two Somali-American women who went missing early Saturday.
Family members say the 19-year-olds Bushra Abdi and Seynab Abdalla called 911 for help shortly after leaving their respective workplaces — one in Shakopee, Minn., and the other in Chaska, Minn., CBS Minnesota reported. Both teens work night shifts and usually meet up on their lunch breaks.
Bushra Abdi and Seynab Abdalla were last seen leaving their respective jobs during a break early Saturday. (Image courtesy of CAIR)
The cousins haven’t been seen or heard from since.
“I don’t think they ran away, because that makes no sense whatsoever,” Bushra’s sister, Habsa Abdi told the Minnesota Star Tribune. “Knowing these girls at this hour … they were returning back to their jobs.”
Habsa, who said she believes the teens were grabbing a bite to eat on their breaks, said police said the 911 call recorded a voice yelling, “help me!” Both women’s phones went dead minutes later.
Two bodies were pulled from a murky pond in Chaska on Sunday evening, bringing the two-day long search for the women to an end. After several hours of searching the pond and surrounding area, emergency crews announced via loud speaker to a crowd of several hundred people that a body had been found in the submerged car, the newspaper reported. Not long after, crews found a second body in the water nearby.
Although officials haven’t identified the recovered bodies as those of the missing cousins, relatives said they were told they were almost certainly theirs. So far, police say they do not suspect foul play.
According to MPR, the state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, aided in the search for the missing young women, who executive director Jaylani Hussein described as “very outgoing. … Bright, young — beautiful young girls.”
The incident remains under investigation by Shakopee and Shaska authorities.
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