Posted on 07/10/2006 5:53:45 AM PDT by Rte66
Sugar Land police and volunteers with search and rescue organization Texas EquuSearch are looking for a 16-year-old Sugar Land girl missing since Friday night.
Ashton Glover was last seen at 11 p.m. Friday at University and Commonwealth boulevards, “seen leaving with an unknown male in a white Toyota pickup truck,” according to information from Texas EquuSearch.
EquuSearch spokeswoman Barbara Gibson said Glover’s family contacted the Dickinson-based non-profit group Friday night, and when they began a search, Sugar Land police already were on the scene looking for the missing girl.
“The biggest thing is her truck hasn’t been found, either,” Gibson said. Glover had been driving a burgundy 2000 Ford Ranger with an extended cab, with license plate number 02G-NZ1.
No one has heard from Glover since her disappearance, Gibson said.
EquuSearch has set up a search command center at Christ United Methodist Church, 3300 Austin Parkway, Sugar Land. Volunteers began looking for Glover late Sunday and planned to continue the search until dark.
Anyone with information about Glover’s whereabouts is urged to contact the Sugar Land Police Department at 281-275-2500, or Texas EquuSearch at 281-309-9500.
Ashton Glover
Sugar Land, TX
.She was last seen Friday night at the mud-jumping area where she'd gone with friends with ATVs
.She left with two boys she told others she knew in a white Toyota pickup
.Her own burgundy extended cab Ford Ranger 2000 is also missing.
.License plate: TX 02G-NZ1
.Her parents are frantic - she has not used her cell phone since the time she disappeared, which is highly irregular - no calls or texting to friends or family
.Flyer PDF
PrintAFlyer
Hmmm, no Sugar Landers here on FR? I thought we had a lot of 'em. Well, OK. There may be bad news on Ashton Glover. Her truck has been found, for one thing, but police have not released any further details on that.
Also, a female body has been found in a shallow gave near Oil Field Road and Thompson in Ft. Bend County. The Ft Bend sheriff's office is working on the ID now. Law enforcement has notified those at the search headquarters with TX EquuSearch of the possibility these discoveries are connected to Ashton's disappearance.
This was just on local TV news - I'll look for a story online.
Construction Workers Discover Woman's Body Buried South Of Sugar Land
by Bob Dunn, Jul 10, 2006, 03 00 pm
Construction workers discovered a body early Monday afternoon at a site just off of Oilfield Road in an unincorporated area south of Sugar Land.
Fort Bend County Sheriff Milton Wright said it appears the body is that of a female, and had been buried for about two days.
That roughly coincides with the length of time 16-year-old Ashton Glover of Sugar Land has been missing. However, the body hadn’t even been unearthed as of mid Monday afternoon, let alone identified, Wright said.
“The odds are it probably is” Glover, the sheriff said. “But we don’t know that.” He noted that there are “not many” people known to be missing in the area.
Glover was last seen at Friday night at University and Commonwealth boulevards in Sugar Land, “seen leaving with an unknown male in a white Toyota pickup truck,” according to information from search and rescue organization Texas EquuSearch.
Sheriff’s investigators are carefully excavating a shallow grave at a construction site about a third of a mile south of Oilfield Road on Thompson Ferry Road, and probably will not be able to completely unearth the body until this evening, sheriff’s deputies on the scene said.
Wright spoke about the discovery while standing in front of barricades and police tape preventing the public from entering Thompson Ferry from Oilfield Road. The body was found at a site where workers were laying utility lines for future residential development.
The sheriff said heavy rain in the night softened ground over a piece of heavy construction equipment, which sunk into the ground enough to unearth a portion of the body. Construction workers called the sheriff’s department upon making the discovery.
Shortly after Sheriff Wright left the crime scene, a group of Glover’s relatives tried in vain to gain access to the body.
“I just need to know if it’s her or if it’s not,” said Mark Stokes, Glover’s stepfather. “And if we should call off the search or not.”
Stokes said he had purchased a maroon 2004 Ford Ranger pickup truck for Glover, and put it in her mother’s name. That truck, which bears with license plate number 02G-NZ1, also is missing.
Wright said he had information that a vehicle had been recovered in Sugar Land, but had no further details. Sugar Land police were unable to confirm it.
Rte66, please update this thread when you have additional details.
The body has been confirmed as that of Ashton Glover. *sigh* Very sad. Her father did the ID and just spoke on TV, broken up.
Ironically, TX EquuSearch had just mapped out the precise area for their search when LE had to block them away from the site because of the discovery by the construction people.
There will be a press conference in about 30 minutes and I'll update. Thank you for your interest.
Press conference wrap-up on the local evening news
Ashton's father on camera, crying, saying he hopes whoever did this gets what he deserves
.Body was buried 2 feet under ground
.5 miles east of where Ashton was last seen
.Milton Wright, Ft Bend County sheriff is making the announcement
.Clothing description and class ring only for ID at this time
.No suspects
.Video surveillance tape from "It's a Grind" coffee house being analyzed because Ashton was seen on it outside, earlier in the evening on Friday night with friends, out by her truck, going to a white Toyota pick-up and getting in with a lone male
.Father Terry Glover has a msg for killer - "I don't know why you did it, but I hope that later in life, you realize what you have done. It takes a messed-up individual to do something like this. I hope you get what you deserve."
.Family has a lot of family members in town and is getting lots of support. Her mother wasn't shown in the clips tonight. [Aside: I got the feeling yesterday when she was speaking out for Ashton to come home or be brought home that she was perhaps medicated - by a doctor, I mean - for her anxiety. She was calmer than her temperament appears that her demeanor would be. I imagine she fell apart over this news. She looks very much like the late Patsy Ramsey, which was why this case caught my eye. Her daughter looked a lot like her, except a fuller face.]
.First Colony Methodist Church in First Colony - candlelight ceremony tonight there at 10PM - this is her home church.
.Investigators are going over the maroon Ford Ranger found elsewhere, for possible evidence.
Some updates on Ashton Glover's murder. Two of her so-called "friends," fellow classmates at Clements HS, are now charged with the homicide, but they have not yet been apprehended.
What makes me sick is that these two boys were the ones who told cops they saw her leave with some other guys (SODDI) and a few days later, her mom called one of them to ask some more questions.
She didn't know these boys, but they said they were the last ones to see her. So, she asked one of them to go out to the scene where Ashton's body was found so he could explain some things to her.
He refused to go, which put up red flags for her - then he and the other friend disappeared from their homes shortly thereafter and haven't been seen or heard from since then.
Ft Bend sheriff got search warrants and searched their Sugar Land houses earlier, but today got a 2nd warrant and were seen carrying out shovels, a gun, computer CPUs and other bags of potential evidence.
Here's an article from earlier today:
~~~~
July 12, 2006, 5:04PM
Two charged in death of Fort Bend teenager
By ERIC HANSON
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle
RICHMOND -- Fort Bend County authorities today charged two 18-year-old men with murder in the death of a Sugar Land teenager whose body was found Monday in a shallow grave in a muddy field.
Charged in the slaying are Sean H. Brown and Matthew R. McCombs, aid Sheriff Milton Wright. Both men are being sought by authorities.
They are believed to be driving a 1999 Dodge Ram 4x4 pickup with Texas license plate number 2DDX08.
The motive for the slaying is still unknown, Wright said.
An autopsy was completed Tuesday in the death of Ashton Glover, whose body was found at a construction site off Oil Field Road just west of Missouri City.
The cause of death of blunt force trauma, Wright said. He said there were no signs of robbery or sexual assault.
Family members are hoping for a swift arrest and strong punishment.
"For somebody to take your loved one's life and then do to them what they did, I hope they rot in hell," said Carla Hensley, the victim's aunt.
"They buried her in dirt, covered her body up so that she may have never been found. Thank God we have a body that we can bury, thank God for that," Hensley said Tuesday.
Hensley said her niece was a 4-H member and wanted to become a veterinarian. ...
"She was a big Aggie. She wanted to go to A&M. She wanted to go sky jumping; she wanted to go to Europe; she wanted to go to New York. She wanted to live a full life," Hensley said.
Glover, an incoming senior at Clements High School, was last seen by friends getting into a white truck about 12:30 a.m. Saturday near University and Commonwealth in Sugar Land.
.....
At roughly the same time the body was found, police found Glover's pickup parked in the 17000 block of Marigold.
After police began investigating Glover's disappearance, detectives obtained a surveillance videotape from the coffee shop showing someone driving away in Glover's truck.
"We have not identified who moved the pickup," Wright said.
Sean H. Brown and Matthew R. McCombs are probably going to find out shortly that they're not nearly smart enough to get away from Texas law enforcement.
But, if they make it to New Orleans, they have a chance.
They're not chocolate. You better believe our LEOs will get them. And we'll all still be alive when they fry.
I'm not sure they'll be charged with capital murder. It kind of depends on what evidence is gathered. Simply murdering someone in Texas is not sufficient to get the death penalty. It all depends on what really happened.
But, if I had to guess, I'd say you're right.
Since the autopsy indicated no sexual assault and the cops said robbery was not a motive, I'm kind of thinking that at some point in the evening, she may have indicated she needed or wanted to go home and they detained her.
We don't know who moved her truck from the coffee shop parking lot to the nearby residential area, but it wasn't Ashton. It was a male, who came back later, after she had left in the white pickup with two other males.
Whether or not she gave them the keys to move it or whether one of them moved it so no one would be suspicious of her disappearance, we don't yet know. Chances are, if she were not incapacitated in some way, she would've come and moved her truck herself.
If she were forcibly detained at a later point, even after going willingly with them at first, that is still kidnapping. Kidnapping would be an enhancement of the murder charge and would qualify as capital murder.
That's just it. Unless someone confesses or some other eyewitness steps forward, an allegation of kidnapping will probably be hard to prove.
It's probably too early to overanalyze the case at this point. The first thing is to arrest the two believed to be involved.
The suspects have been caught! They were just intercepted trying to cross into Canada (Ontario) from Michigan (Port Huron). Arrested by the Border Patrol.
They were in the suspected getaway car. Additional info - a bloody shirt was found in one of the homes LE searched this afternoon on Hodges Bend Circle in Sugar Land.
Good news.
Her funeral will be Saturday morning at First Colony Church of Christ. (It *is* Church of Christ, not Methodist as they said the first time.) Visitation tomorrow night from 5:00 on, at the Settegast-Kopf in Sugar Land.
She sure was - and a lot more clear-headed than the last few times she spoke (understandably). She was counting her blessings, such as having a body to bury, and knowing in her heart that Ashton loved God and must be in the Best Place we can be. She was glad these guys screwed up and incriminated themselves.
It's still spooky to me how much she looks, talks and acts like Patsy Ramsey - except that she's hell-bent on avenging her daughter's death. Perhaps she is a Texas woman by raising.
Luckily, these maroons are 18 - I was afraid they were 16 like Ashton was and that can get tricky with the "minor" laws.
Update on Ashton Glover murder:
This is from TV news, until I have time to get a full story online.
.Ashton was killed by a gunshot wound to the head.
.Matthew McCombs is waiving extradition (from MI to TX, not from Canada to US) and will be brought back to Sugar Land soon, after Ft Bend LEOs go to Michigan to get the car and question these two.
.McCombs's bond is set at $5,000,000 (woo hoo!)
.Brown has gotten an attorney and is fighting extradition from Michigan to TX. His hearing won't be for another month.
.Tests are continuing on the bloody shirt found at Brown's home.
.Forensic testing will be done on the car - whether in MI or TX, I don't know.
[Guess we can surmise who might've done a larger percentage of the crime here.]
There have been some small details on Ashton's case the past two days, but the most important one is that LE believes they found the murder weapon - a handgun - among the potential evidence seized in Brown's house.
Also, some of the local LEOs are still in Michigan, going over the getaway car impounded.
I wanted to bump this because Ashton's visitation was tonight, from 5PM to 10PM and what was so neat was that the last hour, 9PM to 10PM, was a "sparkler vigil." Outside the funeral home, everyone got multitudes of sparklers to light and burn (safely) in Ashton's honor and remembrance, because they were her favorites.
They showed video of her friends with their sparklers *sparkling* on the 10PM news. I think it was a great idea for a young woman who was said to have such a sparkling personality.
Ft Bend Co. sheriff is holding a press conference now, because Matthew McCombs has arrived back in Houston and is in the Ft Bend Co jail.
McCombs was going to make a statement, but it wound up just being a statement to LE, not a wider audience. He did implicate himself and Sean Brown, both.
However, Sheriff Wright said the pistol that was found was actually found in McCombs' house (I thought they said it was Brown's, originally). It is an antique revolver-type, but which ammo is still available for. It was the murder weapon.
When asked "why," McCombs' short answer was "morbid curiosity." He said more, but Wright wanted to limit it to that, for now.
Ashton was killed Friday night before midnight, right in the field where these creeps buried her. They took the gun with them that night, planning to kill someone, according to McCombs' statement.
They had only $500 between them when the fled towards Canada. McCombs will be arraigned tomorrow. For whatever reason, this is not considered a capital case.
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