MUSKOGEE – On Saturday, Jan. 13, Amanda Harms walked away from her home near 44th and Denison after 8 p.m. in freezing temperatures and never returned. Five days later her frozen body was finally found over three miles away in the backyard of a house in the 600 block of West Martin Luther King St. A resident returning home from work discovered her body.
According to her husband, Erik Harms, “Mandi” had walked to the Family Dollar store on Saturday and a man had given her a ride home around 6:30 p.m. Then later she changed clothes and left again.
Erik stated he had been on the phone with one of their daughters and so he had a good timeframe of when she had left a little after 8 p.m. By this time the wind chill factor was at a negative 4 and dropping fast.
“I asked her where her car key was and she said she couldn’t find it,” Erik said. “So at 8:03 p.m. she got kind of bundled up again but she couldn’t find her car key, couldn’t find her phone and she thought she had her credit card in her coat pocket but it was laying on the island there. It was like an hour or two later when I was walking into the kitchen and I saw the card.
“When Austin (their son) got home at 10:15 I think, he went out and drove around to the store but he didn’t see her on the path we thought she’d be on. So we just waited because we didn’t have any way to contact her or anything.”
It was Sunday morning, Jan. 14, when Erik contacted Mandi’s mother, Shelley Townsend, to tell her that Mandi hadn’t come home. It was Mandi’s 46th birthday.
Townsend was in Oklahoma City but drove back on treacherous roads to file a missing person’s report by that evening. The next three days family members and friends were handing out flyers with Mandi’s information on them to homes and businesses and sharing it on social media. Then Thursday the police told the family that Mandi was spotted on a surveillance camera around 40th and Broadway. However, less than an hour later they returned with the devastating news that Mandi had been found but was deceased.
Muskogee Police Spokesperson Lynn Hamlin stated that investigators are waiting on findings of the state medical examiner’s office before determining a cause of death.
Townsend stated after receiving the news of her daughter’s death, “We are just devastated. We can’t believe it. Mandi was a good person, a wonderful daughter and a good mother. She taught school for over 20 years and was a good teacher. I know because of the outpouring of people that prayed for her, shared the flier and tried to bring her home.”
Harms was a sixth grade Math teacher at the 6th and 7th Grade Academy in Muskogee. She leaves behind three children and one grandchild.
In a news release, Muskogee Public Schools expressed the department’s sympathy to the Harms family and stated counselors will be available for students and staff if needed.
