Trinity Backus's aunt says 16-yr-old found dead in woods tried acid with friend before disappearing
NEVADA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA: The aunt of a California teen who was found dead on November 11 said the 16-year-old experimented with drugs and had been acting suspiciously before disappearing. Trinity Backus was reported missing on Thursday, November 10, after disappearing from her aunt’s place on Wednesday. Her corpse was discovered just after 2 pm on Friday in a densely forested river drainage region approximately half a mile north of her residence on Kentucky Ravine Road.
Ashley Bjorklund, 34, told The Post on Monday that Backus tried acid with a friend, Hannah, who stayed at her place on the night of her disappearance. She also revealed that she and her boyfriend, whom she only identified as Logan, had gone to bed sometime before 9.30 pm but Backus and Hannah stayed up and streamed some show on TV.
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“Maybe [around] 9:50 [or] 10:00, Trinity comes to our back door, opens it, and starts yelling,” Bjorklund said. “She says, ‘you guys need to get out of the house, it’s gonna blow, I have an open fireplace — me and Logan immediately thought the house was on fire.” “I went out there and looked, but there was nothing wrong — the fire’s fine, the house is fine,” Bjorklund added. “And Trinity’s yelling, ‘everybody get outside, there’s radiation, I can see the radiation.'”
Bjorklund said Backus was yelling from her back porch. She then sent her boyfriend outside to bring Backus in but she had already bolted away. “He came back in the house within, I don’t know, three minutes or so. And he said, ‘Ashley, I cannot find her,'” she said. "I’m thinking, she’s got to be messing with us.” Backus was only wearing pajamas and socks before she disappeared, Bjorklund said.
Breaking: Sad update to the search for missing teen Trinity Backus. Searchers in Nevada County found her body around 2pm, 1/2 mile from where she was last seen Wed. 10:30pm. The red in the picture shows everywhere lane enforcement searched. @kcranews pic.twitter.com/mKMQa1FCAj
— Michelle Bandur KCRA (@MBandurKCRA) November 12, 2022
Bjorklund then called Backus's mother, Andrea Stanio, who rushed to her place and informed the police. The officials immediately launched an investigation and interrogated Hannah. “That is when we found out the girls had done acid,” Bjorklund said. “Hannah told us they had taken two hits each of acid.” The two didn't appear to be intoxicated that evening, according to Bjorkland, who questioned the admission. “I’m 34 years old,” she said. “I can tell if somebody’s high out of their gourd — she wasn’t high out of her gourd.”
Coming clean, Hannah said the pair only decided to smoke from a bong after Bjorklund and Logan went to sleep. “That’s when it triggered the episode,” Bjorklund said.
“We don’t even know if what she actually took was acid,” she added. “There’s so much crap out on the streets these days. I don’t know how she died. I don’t know if she died of an overdose — I don’t know. She took her clothes off right before she passed away — I don’t know if she had hypothermia. We were screaming all over this mountain all night long.”
The aunt claimed her niece was not someone who did drugs regularly. “Trinity wasn’t a druggie,” she said. “Trinity was a child who decided to be an idiot and experiment and not freaking talk to us about it.”
According to the Nevada County Sheriff's Office, there was "nothing suspicious" about the death. "Her cause of death is unknown," the office added. "We have been in communication with the family and extend our deepest condolences to them as they work through this loss.”