Body Found in Search for Missing Chilean

Aug. 8, 2008— -- Investigators searching for a 36-year-old Chilean woman who went missing during her last days of a professional exchange program at West Virginia University recovered a dead body in a river late Thursday, police said.

It is unclear whether the woman's remains, which were pulled from the Monongahela River, belong to Carmen Gloria Sanchez Gutierrez. "Positive identification has not been made as of this time," the Morgantown Police Department announced in a release.

Because the body was found outside of Morgantown, the West Virginia State Police will oversee the death investigation.

Gutierrez was reported missing after she left a restaurant where friends were having dinner to make a phone call to her husband in Chile. He never heard from Gutierrez, who instead knocked on the door of a random house in Star City, W.Va., and asked for help, according to West Virginia University officials and the Morgantown Police Department.

When the homeowners told the woman they would call the police for her, she reportedly took off.

"I don't know whether she appeared nervous or what," First Sgt. Steve Ford, a spokesman for the Morgantown police, told ABCNews.com Thursday before the body was recovered. "She started backing away and ran away from the house before the police got there."

Authorities in Morgantown took over the investigation from the West Virginia University police Wednesday afternoon and began searching the area where Gutierrez was last seen with scent-sniffing dogs.

Ford described Gutierrez as an outdoors enthusiast who arrived in Morgantown in April from Coyhaique, Chile, for a professional exchange program through West Virginia University. Gutierrez speaks some English.

Becky Lofstead, a West Virginia University administrator, wrote in an e-mail to ABCNews.com that Gutierrez was participating as an apprentice guide in the university's "Adventure WV" program. Gutierrez was living with a host family, according to Lofstead.

The program, according to the university Web site, offers outdoor orientation trips to incoming freshman.

"The WVU family cares about Carmen and we are all hoping and praying for a successful outcome," the university said in a statement to ABCNews.com.

Gutierrez was participating in an outdoor trip over the weekend several hours from the university, but had returned to Morgantown by Monday, according to Ford, the police spokesman.