ASTORIA, Ore. — Brianna Judge always loved long nature strolls. Distraught one night after a fight with her boyfriend, she chose to sift through her thoughts by leaving the warmth of her Elsie apartment and entering the frigid, dark night.
But after going out at about 9 p.m. on Jan. 10, the young woman disappeared. Residents located a pair of boots that Judge had worn that night during a search two weeks later on the Oregon Highway 103 bridge near Tweedle Road. Other searches, though, turned up nothing. Her body was finally located Feb. 11 in the Nehalem River near Riverbend Road in rural Clatsop County.
How Judge ended up in the river is not known for sure.
An autopsy conducted Tuesday determined that Judge died from drowning, said Sgt. Jason Hoover of the Clatsop County Sheriff’s Office. State and county medical examiners found no signs of foul play. Hoover said it was likely Judge died within hours of going missing and that she could have entered the river willingly or by accident.
From her apartment on Elderberry Road to the bridge, Judge, 23, would have walked a little more than 4 miles.
Why the boots turned up on the bridge, which stands about 20 to 30 feet above the Nehalem River below, is also unknown.
With temperatures at or below freezing and snow beginning to fall that evening, it’s unlikely Judge ventured far beyond the bridge without wearing the boots, Joyce Judge, her mother, said.
“I can’t see her untying those boots,” Joyce Judge said. “I cannot picture her jumping over that bridge.”
Brianna Judge, born and raised in Gresham, moved to Elsie with her boyfriend, Kevin Ellisor, when she was 19. She worked at Camp 18 restaurant and the Elderberry Inn, on Highway 26 east of Seaside.
When Brianna and Kevin fought on Jan. 10, Brianna called her mother, who advised her to leave the house and air her feelings out before the fight escalated.
“I don’t know if that was the best advice to have given her,” Joyce Judge said.
She did not find out about Brianna’s disappearance for three days, when Kevin called her. She said she does not blame Kevin for what happened to her daughter.
Brianna will be buried in Portland next to her older sister, Allison, who died in 1999 when she was 9.
