TRUCKEE, Calif. (NewsNation) — Police said Monday they believe a body found by a dive team in a California lake is that of Kiely Rodni.
During a news conference, authorities said a positive identification has not been made and the investigation is still ongoing.
The 16-year-old vanished on Aug. 6 after attending a “senior send-off” party north of Lake Tahoe in northern California, near the Prosser Family Campground in Truckee.
The dive team, Adventures with Purpose, said a car with Rodni’s body inside was found upside down in 14 feet of water in Prosser Lake, only a few hundred yards away from the campground. Police have not confirmed if Rodni’s body has been located. The Nevada County Sheriff’s Office said it was contacted by the dive team and is investigating along with the Placer County Sheriff’s Office, FBI and allied agencies.
The Placer County Sheriff’s Office and nearly a dozen other law enforcement agencies searched the Tahoe National Forest for the recent graduate and her 2013 silver Honda CRV. The investigators also combed through hundreds of tips since an estimated 200+ teenagers and young adults went to the senior bash. They scaled back their search efforts Monday.
“To date, we’ve had something like 9,000 man hours … which is astronomical,” Nevada County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Sam Brown said at the time.
In a previous interview with NewsNation, Rodni’s mother, Lindsey Rodni-Nieman, described her daughter as a special and dynamic woman who loves playing music, science, baking and dancing.
“There doesn’t seem to be anybody ever who I come across who doesn’t just love her,” her mother said. “She was so smart. She’s so funny. She’s great with little kids. I could go on and on about everything.”
Rodni-Nieman also reflected on the last text she received from her daughter.
“It was 11:30 at night and she said that she was going to be planning on leaving about 12:15 and coming home and I told her to be careful and wake me up when she got home and she said, ‘OK, Mom. I love you.’”
Rodni-Nieman said she has no reason to doubt that her daughter sent the text message and that it’s a message she had received over and over again from her.
“She was always checking. She was always letting me know where she was, when she was leaving, where she was going next,” she said in the Aug. 11 interview.
Rodni-Nieman said she woke up at around 8 a.m. Aug. 6 and realized her daughter had not woken her up when she got home.
“I got up and looked at the driveway and her car wasn’t there. I looked at her room and she wasn’t there. I grabbed my phone and I looked for her location that she always shared with me and the last update it had was from the party site at about midnight,” she said.
From there, Rodni-Nieman reached out to Kiely’s good friend to see if she was there. Once she found out she was not with her friend, panic set in.
As for Kiely’s father, Daniel Rodni says the last couple of weeks have been absolute agony.
“Every day is a roller coaster. Emotions are out of control,” he said.
Anyone with information about the case is urged to call the Placer County Sheriff’s Office at 530-886-5375.