Rita Maze, a 47-year-old woman from Montana, died tragically Tuesday after she was kidnapped from her home and stuffed in the trunk of her own car that afternoon. Maze was able to call her family from the trunk before her death and pleaded for her life, but sadly, it was too late.
Maze was on her way back home to Great Falls, Montana, where she visited her sick mother in Helena, when she stopped at a rest stop Tuesday morning. According to authorities, a “large man in a black hoodie” hit her on the head and put her into her trunk. Her husband Bob and daughter Rochelle called the police that night to report her disappearance.
At around 10:25 p.m. that night, Maze called her family telling them what happened, saying she wasn’t sure if she was in her own car or something else’s. She was reportedly hysterical and it was hard for them to understand what she was saying. She also didn’t know if there was a sole kidnapper or multiple.
“She traveled with a gun, and she knew he had her gun, and she was terrified,” Rochelle told the Tribune. “He kept her in the trunk for 12 hours.”
After being on the phone for 10 minutes, Maze lost contact with her family and they were not able to get back in touch with her. “I told her that I loved her,” Rochelle told the newspaper. “That’s the last thing she heard.”
Rochelle and her father immediately called the police about the phone cal, but authorities were unable to save her. The driver seemed to be heading to Washington from Montana before it was abandoned at the Spokane airport. Police found her body early Wednesday after tracing her cell phone. Her cause of death has not yet been released and police are still looking for a person of interest.
Her family has since set up a GoFundMe page, with the account already surpassing its $10,000 goal. According to KREM-TV, Rochelle was able to go wedding dress shopping with her mother before her tragic death. “My mom was always a playful mom. She was always swimming with us in the pool and throwing us around, taking us on park days and always being a kid with us” Rochelle told KXLH-TV. “She was a child at heart at all times. That is what I remember about my mom.”
[H/T: Cosmopolitan]
