The family of a student from Colorado is urgently searching for answers after their 18-year-old daughter disappeared for three days and was then discovered frozen in the snow.

Megan Trussell, who was thoroughly enjoying her first year at the University of Colorado in Boulder, suddenly became unreachable by her father on February 12.

The teen had been last seen on security footage leaving her campus-dorm around 9pm on February 9. 

Three days later, her body was discovered just outside of the city. 

Trussell was found frozen and covered in snow, with just her face and red hair visible, as she was pronounced dead almost immediately. 

According to the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office, “Sheriff [Curtis] Johnson believes his team conducted a comprehensive investigation concerning Megan’s death based on all the available evidence,” as reported by People.

But her family disagree, and are still seeking answers months later after conducting their own investigation into their daughter’s tragic death. 

Megan’s 54-year-old father expressed, “I could accept a suicide ruling if there were conclusive evidence showing that’s what transpired, but there’s just too much inconclusive evidence.”

Trussell, according to her family, wasn’t suicidal and had been enjoying college life. 

‘[Her sister] said that Megan’s life was going well,’ an investigator wrote in a report obtained by People.

‘Megan really liked college, she was dating someone she really liked, the only thing she didn’t like was her roommate.’

According to her sister, Trussell was looking forward to a cousin’s birthday party and ‘no matter how down Megan was, she did not think that she would kill herself.’ 

According to Trussell’s parents, evidence from the investigation presented a complicated picture of their daughter’s last few days alive and was sometimes contradictory. 

‘The circumstances are very suspicious. She’s missing a shoe that has never turned up,’ her mother Vanessa Diaz, 52, added. 

Trussell had got into an argument with her roommate and boyfriend on the night she was last seen, People reported. 

Investigators wrote in reports that the argument ensued after Trussell’s roommate found her and her boyfriend being intimate in their room. 

Trussell and her boyfriend then ‘got into an argument about what happened,’ and he broke up with her and blocked her on his phone,’ the outlet reported. 

She then wandered around campus before she vanished, which a detective determined as ‘unusual’ and ‘out of character’ behavior from Trussell. 

Trussell’s roommate believed she had gone to stay with her older sister, who was also a student at the university. 

Volunteers began scouring the city for the missing teen days after she was last seen before one discovered an empty bottle of Adderall with her name on it. 

After her parents pushed for further answers, a second autopsy revealed the contents of Trussell’s stomach. 

In May, authorities ruled the young freshman’s death as a suicide due to ‘the result of the toxic effects of amphetamine,’ a key ingredient in Adderall, as well as hypothermia. 

In her dorm, investigators found three empty bottles of the prescription drug, each with the capacity for 30 pills, in addition to the bottle found near her body. 

Deputy Coroner Kolleen Hancock said the teenager’s body was found around 20 feet down a rock slope, which resulted in bruises that were determined to have not contributed to her death. 

‘She had a stomach and throat full of pills,’ forensic pathologist Dr. Priya Banerjee told People. 

‘That to me is very intentional. Rarely can you force-feed someone that many pills.’ 

Trussell’s family, however, remain determined that there is a piece of the story missing. 

‘We don’t know what else was in the stomach contents,’ her father said. 

‘They only tested for toxicology. And, we don’t know where this extra pill material came from. Megan did not have any Adderall beyond her normal prescription in her possession.’

Her family also remain troubled by the fact that the teen’s body was found in such unusual circumstances and without her phone or purse. 

Trussell’s phone had pinged twice near where her body was found, but hadn’t been discovered until around a month later after it was traced to a resale kiosk on March 2. 

Elliot Bearfore, a homeless man, was accused of theft and false declaration to a pawnbroker after he allegedly tried to steal the phone. 

Bearfore told authorities he got the phone from a different homeless man, named Travis, who found the purse on a bike path but didn’t report them.  

In addition, investigators found no prior evidence of suicidal behavior and found no note before she died. 

Trussell’s sister added that she had also not abused her Adderall, and she was surprised that her sister hadn’t come to her after the argument with her roommate and boyfriend. 

‘I asked … if she knew whether Megan had ever dealt with any kind of heartache. [She] said that her Spotify playlist would suggest that,’ her sister told a detective, the report noted. 

Trussell’s sister noted that she had found their parents divorce ‘traumatic’ and added, when asked if Trussell had ever experienced depression, that she ‘thought it was mostly just a teenage girl thing.’

Her father, Joe, bolstered that his daughter was ‘a strong kid’ who ‘handled [their divorce] well considering the circumstances.’

Trussell’s family labelled investigating authorities as ‘callous’ with an ‘obvious bias since the start.’

Diaz believed that someone attacked her daughter while she was on the way to get a Diet Coke – her favorite drink- from a convenience store. 

Both Trussell’s mom and dad believe authorities set out with the intention to label her death a suicide. 

‘They did nothing to rule anything out,’ Diaz told People. ‘Truly, it was confirmation bias. They only went with what aligned with what their theory was.’

Her father added that his daughter’s death seemed like ‘an extremely elaborate way for somebody who’s never had a history to commit suicide.’

‘Megan was a pretty well-adjusted person,’ he said. ‘She was a pretty well-put-together woman, and nothing in her past behavior would point to that.’

‘I also find it extremely offensive, even though it’s within their rights, for the Boulder sheriff in their press release to say that she had amphetamine in her body when it was an Adderall prescription. Because the public perception then becomes, “Oh, this is just a meth-head who killed herself.”‘

‘The goal is, No. 1, to clear Megan of having her name associated with suicide, because I don’t think it’s true,’ Joe said. 

‘No. 2, to catch whoever is responsible. Because what’s lost in all this is that somebody played a part in this, and they’re still out there and potentially still out there among 40,000 college students. And nobody seems to be looking at that. And that’s a scary thing.’

Her family has hired their own private investigator and is offering $6,000 for information leading to an arrest. A Change.org petition, which garnered over 3,000 signatures as of Wednesday, was launched to help in their search for justice for Trussell. 

A GoFundMe for the legal costs and investigation into her death has raised over $84,000 for her family to find answers.  

‘This is not going to be resolved this week or next week,’ Joe added. ‘If it takes the rest of my life, this is what we’re going to do.’