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Missing West McDowell Junior High teacher found

photo by Richelle Bailey

Special Agent Van Williams of the SBI examines the Fields residence Monday.

By Richelle Bailey | The McDowell News

Published: January 26, 2009

Updated: 01/26/2009 09:35 pm

The disappearance of a West McDowell Junior High School teacher took a bizarre but fortunate turn Monday night when the woman authorities had been searching for all day came out of the woods unharmed about a mile from her house.
Capt. Vic Hollifield of the McDowell County Sheriff's Office said 28-year-old Amanda Fields appeared at a home on Candee Acres off Stacy Hill Road wearing multiple layers of clothing, including her pajamas, and baseball cleats. She had part of a rope around one wrist and a loose cord dangling from one foot. She sustained minor cuts and bruises, and there was a bald spot on her head.
The resident at the Candee Acres house called for an ambulance, and, after arriving on the scene, paramedics notified the Sheriff's Office.
Fields was taken to Memorial Mission Hospital in Asheville for evaluation.
Hollifield stated Monday night that detectives had not had a chance to interview the teacher about the ordeal but hoped to do so before the night's end.
For the second time, Jason Crisp, a law enforcement officer with the U.S. Forest Service, brought his K-9, Maros, to the area - but this time to backtrack Fields' steps.
Crisp and Maros were called to the scene at U.S. 70 East Monday morning to search for signs of the missing teacher. They were joined by more than a dozen personnel from the Sheriff's Office, the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation and the district attorney's office, as well as a N.C. Highway Patrol helicopter crew.
Fields teaches seventh- and eighth-grade language arts at West McDowell. The search began Monday morning when Sgt. Lynn Greene of the Sheriff's Office, who oversees the school resource officers, was notified that Fields didn't show up for work.
He went to her residence around 9:15 a.m. to conduct a "welfare check" and found Fields' red Ford Mustang sitting in the driveway with the driver's side door open and the keys lying in the seat. Someone had written "Go to hell faggits" on the garage door in red spray paint.
When Greene walked up to the house, he discovered that a window on the door had been smashed with a cinder block. Inside, there were signs of a struggle but no Fields.
The teacher's dog, a dachshund, was running loose in the house.
While some authorities combed the home, car and property, others talked to friends, family members, co-workers and acquaintances.
Hollifield said there were signs of a struggle in the kitchen of the residence, so they were treating it as foul play, "a missing person under suspicious circumstances."
Fields walked out of the woods nearly 10 hours after the investigation began.
The captain said after her discovery Monday night that detectives were going to interview the teacher, regroup and determine from there what path to take next.