State kidnap victim found alive in landfill

KENNEWICK – A Kennewick woman was pulled alive from a Northern California landfill after she reportedly was carjacked and kidnapped while driving to work.

Rebecca Huston, 32, was last heard from April 12. Friends and family began searching for her after she failed to show up for work at a veterinary clinic in Richland.

A landfill employee at the Ukiah Transfer Station in Ukiah, Calif., about 100 miles north of San Francisco on U.S. 101 saw Huston’s feet sticking out from a garbage pile Tuesday morning.

Huston spent Tuesday night at a hospital, where she was treated for a cut head, minor hypothermia and an undisclosed medical condition.

Huston told sheriff’s deputies in Mendocino County, Calif., that she was driving to work the morning of April 13 when a man wearing a ski mask and carrying a gun climbed into her car, demanding that she drive south. The next four nights, she told deputies, they drove through Washington, Oregon and California. They stopped occasionally at rest stops and service stations.

She told police the man forced her into a trash bin Monday night and told her not to get out. The container was emptied into a county garbage truck, and the trash was transported to the landfill.

Deputies later found Huston’s car in the parking lot of a grocery store in Ukiah. Mendocino County sheriff’s deputies were expected to search the car for evidence, including fingerprints, Kennewick detective Sgt. Randy Maynard said.

Maynard said it wasn’t clear if Huston was knocked unconscious or fell asleep in the trash bin. There was no indication that she had been assaulted.

“I’m pretty overwhelmed emotionally,” said Tere Page, a friend of Huston. “This is the best news I’ve had in years.”