Teens found dead in car wreck a week after their disappearance, Missouri officials say

Two Missouri 18-year-olds who had been missing for more than a week were found dead on Thursday following a car crash, officials say.

Braden Tuck and Damien Grant, from Forsyth in southwestern Missouri, left home during the afternoon of May 25 to get food and look at flood waters, according to a missing person’s poster. They never returned.

Crews searched for the teenagers for a week before the 1999 GMC Jimmy they were driving was found Thursday afternoon at the bottom of a ravine near Chadwick, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol. Grant and Tuck were pronounced dead at the scene.

The highway patrol said Tuck was driving when the SUV ran off Highway H and down the ravine. The SUV plunged 60 to 80 feet and landed upside down, KY3 reported.

It’s unclear when the crash occurred or what caused it. It’s likely Tuck and Grant had been there for a week, investigators told KY3.

Tuck was wearing a seat belt but Grant was not, highway patrol said.

“The fact that it’s downhill from both directions, It’s just not a very good corner,” nearby resident Chris Workman told Ozarks First. “There’s been a lot of cars over in there. It’s a pretty far drop, it’s probably 30 feet. It seems like a straight stretch but it leans wrong, it’s just a bad spot.”

Grant’s uncle, Richard “Rocky” McMahan, was also killed outside a Branson restaurant last week, a family member said.

“Our family is crushed. Two loses in one week,” Mystree McMahan wrote on Facebook. “My heart goes out to the Tuck family as well. This has been a hard hit for everyone.”

This story was originally published June 4, 2021 at 9:07 AM with the headline "Teens found dead in car wreck a week after their disappearance, Missouri officials say."