Crash victim may be missing woman

GIBSON TOWNSHIP - A body found in a black Chevy Trail Blazer that crashed and overturned in a steep, wooded ditch may be that of a 33-year-old Union City woman who's been missing more than a week.

Law enforcement agencies on Wednesday afternoon shortly after 1 p.m. responded to reports of a vehicle found in a steep ditch that was covered in a woods and vegetation on the Ohio side of Stateline Road, about a quarter mile south of Fox Road southwest of Fort Recovery.

Authorities discovered a body inside a 2003 Trailblazer whose registration matches that of Shawna Rue Ressler of Union City, Ohio/Indiana, Darke County Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy Mark Whittaker told the newspaper at the scene.

Ressler was last seen on Stateline Road north of Union City at 12:12 p.m. Aug. 4 traveling to a destination in Celina, according to Whittaker.

"The vehicle that is crashed in the ravine belongs to Shawna Ressler, and the evidence in the vehicle as well as some of the clothing on the deceased appears to match what Mrs. Ressler was wearing when she was last seen on Sunday, Aug. 4," he said. "That does not mean that she's been positively identified."

Whittaker said positive identification is pending a forensic examination by the Mercer County Coroner's Office.

The missing person case investigation of Ressler has been suspended pending the identification of the traffic crash victim, Whittaker noted.

"We have sufficient information from the missing person's investigation and descriptors of Shawna that we could utilize some of that information to come to the preliminary conclusion that we have, at least at this point," Whittaker said. "We always want to rely on the coroner's determination to positively identify."

Right now the incident appears to be a traffic accident, but the investigation is just getting underway, Mercer County Chief Deputy Gery Thobe said. No word was given on how long the vehicle had been sitting in the ditch.

"We have no idea what the cause of the death of … the occupant of the vehicle is yet. That's for the Mercer County coroner to investigate," Whittaker added.

Whittaker said this has been a joint operation and investigation from the moment Ressler's family reported her missing and will continue as such.

"The key agencies involved in the investigation was Mercer County Sheriff's Office, the Darke County Sheriff's Office," he added. "Both Union City police departments - Ohio and Indiana - have been heavily involved, and there is a number of other agencies that have assisted in this process."

On Wednesday afternoon, at least seven law enforcement vehicles, including the Mercer County Sheriff's Office's crime-scene and crash-reconstruction vehicle, lined the Ohio side of Stateline Road near the wooded ravine. About a mile stretch of the road was closed as authorities worked.

At 2:16 p.m. a Southwest Mercer Fire Department truck arrived on a scene. A crew of firefighters, including one carrying a chainsaw, walked over to where law enforcement officials were stationed.  

Bursts of chain-sawing could be heard intermittently for the next few hours.

"My understanding is the fire department did cut a couple of trees down trying to stabilize the vehicle before they could get it back on its wheels," Thobe said.

Eventually, what appeared to be a body was placed into the back of a black minivan. Not long after, a wrecker pulled the Trailblazer from the wooded area.

A joint missing person investigation of Ressler was launched Aug. 9, according to Whittaker.

"During the course of the investigation it was discovered that Shawna Rue Ressler was last seen on Stateline Road north of Union City on August 4, 2019, at 12:12 p.m. while traveling to a destination in Celina, Ohio 35 miles north of Union City," a Darke County Sheriff's Office news release issued Wednesday evening stated.

Mercer County Sheriff's Office officials on Aug. 10 confirmed in a news release that Ressler had visited her husband, Steve Ressler, in the Mercer County jail from 6:40 to 7 p.m. Aug. 3.

Later that evening, Shawna Ressler reportedly dropped off her children at their grandmother's home in Union City, Indiana, the release stated.

"It appears that she was fine when she dropped the children off, and that is her last known location at this time, which is not in Mercer County," Grey said in the release.