Hunt Pressed for Mother, Two Children Missing Since April 13

Sheriff’s deputies Friday said they were “truly concerned” about the safety of two children whose mother’s car was found earlier in the week abandoned in the Mojave Desert.

Penny Lopez, 26, left her home in Barstow on April 13 with two of her children after a dispute with her husband, John, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Deputy Tony Valencia said.

The woman’s brown Honda was found Wednesday stuck in sand off Minneola Road in the desert 25 miles north of Barstow and 9 miles north of Interstate 15.

“It’s very suspicious, the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of this person, and we’re truly concerned about the children’s safety at this point,” Valencia said.

A 40-member search team aided by four-wheel-drive vehicles and helicopters combed a 50-square-mile section of the desert Wednesday night, Thursday and Friday but could find no trace of the woman or her two boys, Jeremy, 3 months, and Christopher, 4.

Lopez sent her eldest child, April, 6, to school before disappearing.

Valencia said investigators now believe Lopez may have hitchhiked back to Barstow after abandoning her car and stayed at an undisclosed motel.

The manager of the motel told investigators a woman matching Lopez’s description and an unidentified man spent the night in a room and left the next morning, but there were no children with them, he said.

Valencia said detectives are also checking several other reported sightings around the state of the woman, described as 5-feet-5, 110 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes.