FRIENDS of a Massachusetts woman are now demanding answers after she was found dead following a hike with a cop on leave.
Angela Tramonte, 31, hiked the Echo Canyon Trail in Arizona on Friday with Dario Dizdar of the Phoenix Police Department, less than 24 hours after arriving in the area for a first visit with him after speaking online during two months.
He claimed Tramonte overheated halfway down the trail and wanted to turn around, but he continued the hike on his own, officials said.
Rescue teams went in search of the young woman, but four hours later, her body was found around 4:40 p.m. this afternoon near a house.
Firefighters believe she was trying to alert someone in the area that she was struggling before she collapsed, according to ABC15.
Friends of Tramonte in the Boston, Massachusetts area say they “now want answers.”
“As a cop, as a first responder, you’re supposed to help people. If someone is going up a mountain and you see them in distress and they’re not feeling well and exhausted, why don’t you come back down, ”Stacey Gerardi told WBZ.
“Why would you keep going up? That does not make sense.
Phoenix Police spokeswoman Mercedes Fortune told the Daily Mail that no “traumatic injuries” were observed on Tramonte when she was found or at the autopsy, and that he there is “no evidence that a criminal act is suspected in connection with the tragic death of Mrs. Tramonte.”
“We want justice. We want answers, ”said Gerardi.
“We have to keep pushing. It was my sister. We have had 25 years of friendship.
“It’s hard to imagine that she went out there wearing the [improper] shoes and without water, ”another friend, Evelyn Doherty Trefry, told NBC Boston.
“It’s completely out of character for her. “
“We just want justice for our friend,” reads a GoFundMe page that raises funds to transport Tramonte’s body to Saugus and for his funeral expenses.
Tramonte was in the area visiting Dizdar from Saugus after the two chatted on Instagram for two months.
The couple started the hike together, but Dizdar continued after Tramonte turned around.
When he returned to the parking lot after the hike, Tramonte wasn’t there, so Dizdar called to report his disappearance.
When she was found a few hours later, she was “unresponsive, beyond resuscitation efforts and was declared dead,” the Daily Mail quoted to authorities.
Neither had water with them and Phoenix Fire Captain Rob McDade told the Boston Globe where Tramonte was found: “ [she] could have been in the early stages of heat exhaustion and heat stroke, where you become delusional, and unfortunately your faculties are not your concern.
No charges have been laid in connection with his death.
“This mountain doesn’t care who you are, or whether you are an experienced hiker or hiker,” McDade said of the mountain the trail was on.
“The mountain, in a situation like this, usually wins. “
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