Human Remains Found in Freezer Identified as 16-year-old Girl Missing Since 2005 – Investigation Ongoing in Colorado

The human remains discovered at a recently sold property in Colorado were identified as a 16-year-old girl who had been missing since 2005.

On Friday, Oct. 11, the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office verified in a press release that the human head and hands found in a Grand Junction home in January belong to 16-year-old Amanda Overstreet, who “has not been seen or heard from since April 2005.”

“The victim, Amanda Leariel Overstreet, has been identified through DNA testing,” the sheriff’s office stated. “[Overstreet] was the biological daughter of the previous owner of the property. The circumstances surrounding her disappearance are still being investigated, and forensic testing of material is ongoing. There is no record of Amanda Overstreet having been reported missing.”

During their initial inquiry in January, deputies “found the head and hands of a human, [which] had been discovered in a freezer by someone who arrived to claim the free appliance offered by the new owner of the recently sold home,” according to the release.

Later, the sheriff’s office confirmed to PEOPLE that the case was being investigated as homicide. The sheriff’s office also confirmed in July that the Mesa County Coroner’s Office performed an autopsy on Overstreet’s body, but no other information about her cause of death or the ongoing investigation was released at the time.

Back in January, neighbor Sam Troester told local NBC affiliate KUSA that the former residents of the home left on the morning of January 12, and the new owners arrived later that day to clean up the place.

“It turns out that the new owners of the house posted online that they were looking to sell a bunch of the garbage that was left behind, scrap metal and things that people could repurpose,” Troester recalls, “and there was a deep freezer that was posted up for grabs.”

Troester stated that the folks who came to pick up the freezer later asked if they might use her bathroom.

“I let them in and cautiously I was like, ‘What’s going on?'” Troester informed KUSA. “They went on to tell me that when they opened the freezer to empty it so they could move it, a head dropped out. “A human head!”

The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office has been working with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation on the case, according to source People. Mesa County Sheriff’s Office communications officer Wendy Likes stated that Overstreet was “just a child” when she died.

“I mean, she was a child.” She was sixteen years old. “She is still a child,” Likes told the site.