Coachella man reported missing found dead in desert; family seeks answers

COACHELLA, Calif. (KESQ) A 28-year-old Coachella man reported missing last week has been found dead in the open desert, and his family says they're still searching for answers about how he got there.

Miguel Angel Chavez was found the morning of June 5 in an unincorporated area near Indio, according to the coroner's office. No cause of death has been released. The Sheriff's Office Thermal station is investigating.

Chavez was last seen near Coyote Song Way, north of the Sun City Palm Desert community, according to the Sheriff's Office.

His family says he'd gone on a date and never came home. The man he met whom the family described as a pharmacist is the one who reported him missing, the family said. They said that man turned a phone over to investigators, and that deputies called him cooperative. No one has been arrested, and the Sheriff's Office will not discuss the man.

To the family, it doesn't add up. They say Chavez had diabetes and a herniated disc and could barely walk.

"Why would you walk towards the mountain?" his sister, Dania Chavez, said. "Our common sense is you would walk towards the light, towards the people. So that's our question, why would he go that way?"

"He's not the type of person to just leave," she said. "So we just want answers."

The family says they did much of the searching themselves, and that a friend found one of his shoes in the desert before authorities located him.

Chavez is not the only man to disappear from the area. James Nastasi, 36, was reported missing in May after last being seen in Palm Desert, according to the Sheriff's Office. In a Facebook post, Nastasi's mother said her son had died, writing that the harsh desert had become too much for him to overcome.

Investigators have not said the cases are connected, and have not released a cause of death for either man.