<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=192888919167017&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
Thursday, March 28, 2024
March 28, 2024

Linkedin Pinterest

Cops: Missing Oregon woman’s boyfriend a person of interest

By Associated Press
Published: August 17, 2016, 9:56am

EUGENE, Ore. — The boyfriend of a St. Helens, Ore., woman who has been missing for nearly two weeks has been named a person of interest in her disappearance after being jailed on unrelated charges.

Cheryl Hart, a 35-year-old mother of three, was last seen Aug. 4 with Jeremy Milutin at a residence in Eugene. The woman had been on a trip to Nevada and California before stopping at a friend’s house.

Eugene police detective Jed McGuire declined to elaborate on why police consider Milutin, also of St. Helens, a person of interest. He said it’s “very probable” that Hart’s life is in grave danger, given the amount of time she’s been missing.

Surveillance video captured at a Eugene store at 7 a.m. Aug. 5 shows Milutin by himself. Police have declined to say where Milutin was shopping or what he bought.

Milutin, 36, was then seen at 11:46 a.m. on the same day alone at a gas station in Klamath Falls. He returned to Eugene, and was arrested that night for allegedly driving a stolen car.

The Register-Guard reports that friends and relatives of the missing woman are organizing a search party, but don’t know where to start. Klamath Falls, Ore., is 170 miles southeast of Eugene and more than 300 miles from St. Helens, which is northwest of Portland along the Columbia River.

“It’s possible she was dropped off at some location, but the tent they used for camping is still in the car and it’s not with her,” Hart’s cousin, Tonya Hopkins, told the newspaper. “She doesn’t have a cellphone, she left it with her son, and she did have her ID but her boyfriend had it when he was arrested.”

Hart’s children are 18, 16 and 10, according to Hopkins, and currently in are the care of their grandmother.

Hopkins said she doesn’t know how long Hart and Milutin had been dating, but she said they were engaged at one point.

The stolen car that Milutin is accused of driving at the time Hart disappeared was taken from a church near St. Helens on July 26. He’s been charged with unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, attempting to elude a police officer and other crimes.

Loading...