Jacob Whaley: Virginia man found dead after abandoning car to walk home during blizzard
Jacob Whaley, a 34-year-old, father-of-one has been discovered dead after going missing after abandoning his car to try to walk home during a snowstorm. Whaley's body was discovered on January 8 in Louisa County, Virginia, around 200 yards from where his family feared he could be when he vanished. The 34-year-old had written a final disturbing text to his mother informing her that he was lost. After his car slipped into a ditch owing to slippery road conditions on January 3, Whaley chose to walk nearly six miles home.
His car was found the next day, but his body was found days after he went missing.
To go back to his two-year-old son, he was travelling through the woods. "He was trying to find a path through the woods because there is a neighbourhood that he lives in that he could've gotten to and walked right across the street and been able to get home," his sister Angela Whaley told WTVR. However, the temperature dropped to a bone-chilling point during the journey, and his phone stopped working on the way home. "He got out to walk because the power is out. He couldn't see houses or street names. His phone was only 14 per cent when he started to walk. He got lost. He wasn't that far from the house," Angela explained.
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Whaley's family informed the Louisa County Sheriff's Office when he texted his mother soon before 9 pm, and a search team was dispatched to find him. Whaley was not found, according to the Sheriff's Office, who quickly reacted to the family's request to examine both the roadside area along Greene's Corner Road, the routes in between, and his house.
After days of searching, his body was discovered around 200 yards from where his relatives indicated he would be. Whaley's family is now blaming the police for not doing enough to find him, and they staged a demonstration outside the sheriff's office. Shannon Whaley, his mother, told The New York Times, "I'm so angry with this county. All they had to do was go out and holler for him." Maj Ronnie Roberts, chief deputy for the Louisa County Sheriff’s Office, told The New York Times, “This was a very heavily wooded area off the road that the search team had a hard time getting through. Our county had 100 per cent power outage and impassable roads.”