Austin Oniel Chase was a 36-year-old man from the Tacoma area when he was last seen in the Carbonado, Washington, area on January 13, 2021. The case began with a troubling sequence of events along State Route 165, a rural corridor that winds through Buckley, Burnett, Wilkeson, and Carbonado toward the Fairfax Bridge and the Evans Creek ORV Park area. That morning, Buckley police attempted to stop a silver Ford Escape traveling at a high rate of speed. The driver did not stop, and officers later ended the pursuit near the Fairfax Bridge, south of Carbonado. The vehicle, registered to Austin Chase, was later found over a steep embankment near Evans Creek ORV Park, but Austin was not found in or around it.
In the first days after the vehicle was recovered, searchers faced difficult weather, rugged terrain, and the uncertainty of not knowing whether Austin had walked away injured, become lost, or whether someone else had been involved. Search and rescue teams, including K9 units and 4x4 vehicles, searched the area where the Ford Escape was found, but they did not locate him. Pierce County officials reported that, over the following two weeks, Austin's family could not reach him, there was no activity on his cell phone or financial accounts, and area hospitals had been checked without finding him. At the time, authorities described him as a white male, 36 years old, about 6 feet 1 inch tall, with brown eyes and shaved brown hair; he had last been reported wearing a black or blue zip-up hoodie, light blue jeans, and a white T-shirt.
As months passed, the absence of answers weighed heavily on Austin's loved ones. His mother, Karen Heide, described him as quiet and reserved, someone who spent much of his time with his three children. Friends and family continued to search for him and tried to make sense of the circumstances surrounding the chase, the crash, and the empty vehicle. Investigators did not definitively say, at that stage, that Austin had been the driver; a Pierce County sheriff's sergeant said detectives were not ready to lock the case into one explanation until they could prove what happened. That uncertainty left the family facing more than one painful possibility, including whether Austin had been injured in the crash and disappeared into the woods, whether he had encountered foul play, or whether another person may have been driving his vehicle.
The case remained suspicious and unresolved while Austin's family waited for any sign of him. Deputies publicly emphasized that the investigation was not being dismissed as a simple flight from police followed by a presumed accident. Instead, they acknowledged that the circumstances were unusual and that finding Austin was central to understanding the truth. For more than a year, his family and friends lived with the difficult combination of hope, fear, and unanswered questions, especially because the terrain around the Fairfax Bridge and Evans Creek area is remote enough to conceal evidence but close enough to known roads that it was hard to accept that he could simply vanish without a trace.
Official reports indicate that Austin Chase was later located deceased. Human remains were found by hikers in the Carbonado area in early April 2022, and the Pierce County Medical Examiner's Office later identified those remains as Austin Chase in connection with an incident near Manley-Moore Road East in Carbonado. The Medical Examiner listed Austin as a 37-year-old Tacoma man and reported both the cause and manner of death as undetermined. The identification brought an end to the search for Austin as a missing person, but it did not fully answer how his life ended. In overview, Austin Chase's case began with a January 13, 2021 last-seen event involving his vehicle near Carbonado, developed into a prolonged missing-person investigation marked by a crash scene, difficult searches, and deep concern from family and law enforcement, and closed in the most sorrowful way when his remains were identified, leaving behind both confirmation of his loss and enduring questions about the exact circumstances of his death.
Last Seen: Jan 13, 2021
