GREENBRIER COUNTY, W.Va. — The state medical examiner’s office confirmed the body located among debris in the Caldwell area was that of missing flood victim 14-year-old Mykala Phillips.
Dental records were used to make the identification, said West Virginia state police Sgt. Drew Pendleton. He informed members of the Phillips family Wednesday afternoon.
Pastor Randy Gilliam, Phillips’ uncle, appeared hours earlier on Wednesday’s MetroNews “Talkline” and said the body was found with a couple of Mykala’s personal items.
“The T-shirt that was described by her mama as (her) having on when she disappeared plus her necklace were both there on that body that was found,” Gilliam said. “We’re pretty well sure that that was her.”
The body was located under flood debris along Howard’s Creek, an area previously searched extensively. A bloodhound from Pocahontas County made the discovery.
Greenbrier County Sheriff Jan Cahill told MetroNews contractors had recently broken up a lot of the larger debris fields allowing better access.
“We decided to revisit the same routes,” said Cahil, noting that the bloodhound hit on a sizable debris field Tuesday. “A lot of first responders just started digging.”
Phillips was swept away in floodwaters June 23 as she was trying to escape rising water at her family’s White Sulphur Springs home.
Tied with extension cords to her father and two brothers, ages 15 and 7, Phillips was lost in the raging waters of Howard’s Creek when a cord snapped.
She was last seen alive in the fast-moving current going under the water near the porch of a neighbor’s house, witnesses said.
In the nearly seven weeks since then, extensive searching continued using different methods.
“From the air, (we had) choppers and drones. From the water, every kind of boat you can think of–jon boat, kayak, canoe, air boats like you’d see in the Florida Everglades,” Cahill said. “We’ve had divers. We’ve had cadaver dogs, bloodhounds, not to mention probably 1,000 boots on the ground would be a highly conservative estimate.”
Gilliam said Phillips’ family members were grateful for the work.
“We are thankful for the state police and all those that were involved,” he said. “It has been a real effort of those rescue and recovery personnel.”
A celebration of Mykala’s life was held July 31 at Bethesda Church in White Sulphur Springs. Gilliam said a funeral service would likely follow the body recovery once identification was confirmed.
“It gives us the closure here on the earthly part,” Gilliam said.
Like others, Phillips’ father had held out some hope for Mykala, according to Gilliam.
“The most detrimental thing about finding the body is that that little, bitty, maybe even if its 1/10th of a percent ray of hope that somehow she got out, because the body wasn’t found, he said, ‘Now that hope is totally gone.'”
Phillips, who would have been a freshman at Greenbrier East High School, was one of 23 West Virginians killed in the flooding. Fifteen of the flood deaths were in Greenbrier County.
Cahill said the same bloodhound that located Phillips’ body also found another flood victim whose body had been carried 33 miles through Greenbrier County after the storms.
“I think that just blows people’s minds—that force and the velocity of that water we had there on June 23 that could carry someone that far,” he said.