Body found near waterfall identified as Pleasant Grove woman

PLEASANT GROVE, Utah — Police have identified the woman found dead near Battle Creek Falls in Utah County.

Lela Anne Wooley, 23, was found above Pleasant Grove a week ago on Sept. 1. The body was found 50 yards downstream from the falls Sgt. Spencer Cannon with the Utah County Sheriff’s Office said.

The body was examined by the Utah Medical Examiner’s Office that determined the cause of death to be blunt force trauma.

“The manner of death is still unclear,” said the sheriff’s office said on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. “The case remains active.”

At the time of discovery, Cannon said the woman was from Utah County and it was confirmed Thursday that Wooley is from Pleasant Grove, the city nearest where her body was discovered. At the time of her discovery, Cannon said investigators had an idea of who could be a suspect in the death but no names have been announced and no arrests are on public record. Cannon called the site of her body’s discovery a crime scene.

“One of the unique things about this crime scene that happens to be in a river or a stream, there’s not very much to collect,” Cannon said. “You collect what is there, you take pictures of the scene as they were found the best that you can.”

“We look downstream obviously for anything that might be of value to us, clothing items, personal items, identification, those kinds of things, but it does complicate things when they’re in the middle of a flowing body of water.”