AUSTINTOWN, Ohio — The family of a missing Warren, Ohio, woman finally has some answers.

On Tuesday, the Austintown Police Department issued a statement confirming that the human remains found in October at Meander Reservoir were those of Ericka M. Thomas, 55, who had been missing from Warren for 17 years.

Thomas’s mother reported her missing in October 2008. A skull was found by a couple children last fall and a subsequent search by police revealed a couple other human bones and a wristwatch. Eventually, DNA from Thomas’s mother confirmed her identity.

Austintown Police Chief Valorie Delmont commended her detectives for their work on the case.

“I am very proud of the work the detective division did on this. They were diligent and thorough and took the time to make sure they dotted every I and crossed every T,” she said. “And they were happy to be able to give closure to the family of a missing person.”

A Warren police report shows that Thomas’s mother, Bonnie Giaurtis, reported her missing on the afternoon of Oct, 20, 2008, after not seeing or hearing from Thomas for more than three days.

The report states that Giaurtis went to Thomas’s Southern Boulevard apartment in Warren and told police it appeared that “she had not been there for some time. Her medications are still at the residence and she has a lot of phone messages on her answering machine.”

The report also states that Thomas’s car had been found abandoned with a flat tire in Austintown and was towed and impounded by Austintown police.

On Oct. 1 of last year, two children found a skull near the water line along a small island in Meander Reservoir, south of the Interstate 80 eastbound bridge. The press release states that Austintown detectives went back and located the skull using a police department drone, and then contacted the Meander District Police, Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and Mahoning County Coroner’s Office. Meander and BCI assisted Austintown with processing, searching for and collecting evidence. At the time of the initial discovery, other bones were found near the island, but none were human.

At the end of October, police, BCI and the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office conducted a “hard target search … (which) consisted of probing, digging and raking the area at the water line for additional remains,” the release states. They found a woman’s watch with a metal detector, along with two additional bones, all close to the location of the skull, near the top of the water line.

The release states that right after the skull was found, partially buried, Austintown checked local missing persons and potential cold cases, and uncovered Thomas’s case.

“A preliminary assessment was conducted by the coroner’s office using a local anthropologist at (Youngstown State University). After examining the skull, they concluded that it was of an adult female.”

The release said the profile from the watch and bones began to more closely match Thomas’s case.

“The recovered watch had a date stamp of manufacture of 2007 which was one year prior to the missing report being filed and matched the type the victim wore,” the release said. “The Warren PD case notes indicated that she was last seen on the west end of Austintown near North Jackson on or about (Oct. 18) 2008 after suffering a mental health crisis.”

In 2012, Giaurtis provided a DNA sample for use in the event of such a discovery, and that sample and the bones were sent last year to a BCI lab for testing. The release states that the results showed a DNA match and verified that the bones were Thomas’s.

The release states that there was no visible trauma to the skull or the bones and police have not yet determined how Thomas died or how her remains ended up on the island in the reservoir, but the investigation will continue.