Update: Dara Watson Search Efforts

UPDATE (12:23 p.m. Tuesday)

A press conference has been called by Mount Pleasant police at 4:30 p.m. today.

The site near Awendaw being searched by sheriff's deputies this morning, turned up no new leads in the case.

Searchers returned to the area where Dara Lee Watson's SUV was found six days ago and resumed searching after taking a break on Monday. At noon, deputies were still present at that location.

Sheriff's deputies said they were meeting with Mount Pleasant police this afternoon to talk further about the case and other possible search locations.

Patch will continue to update this story as more information becomes available.

UPDATE (10:35 a.m. Tuesday): Deputies say the remote area of McClellanville they searched this morning turned up nothing of interest relating to Dara Watson.

"So far we only had an area of interest from a tip received by Mount Pleasant Police last night," said sheriff's spokesman Major Jim Brady. "The area is off of Ion Swamp Road and Clayfield Road Awendaw. We are at the location at this time assessing the area to determine if it may have any connection to the Watson case, however, at this time there are no indicators it is."

Deputies are also meeting with Mount Pleasant police today to search the original area of interest from Sunday, Brady said.

The original story appears as follows:

Today the search resumes for 30-year-old Dara Lee Watson, who has been missing for nearly a week.

Authorities said late Monday that they would begin their search afresh in a remote part of McClellanville after a resident there reported seeing freshly disturbed ground in a wooded area, according to WCBD-TV.

That’s the latest, and even more disturbing turn, in a missing-person case that has grown darker by the day.

The last person to report see Watson alive was her fiancé David Hedrick, just hours after police began to ask questions about Watson’s whereabouts, .

Hedrick’s friends say they showed up at the couple’s Mount Pleasant home just after they began to hear reports that Watson was missing.

"We went up to break in and that’s when we heard a gunshot,” said Patrick O’Neil, a friend, according to WCBD-TV. “I think something went wrong between them Monday night and either an accident or you know just something happened. Something escalated out of control.”

Watson was seen last by her family in North Carolina on Feb. 6. A few text messages to her employer and sister were sent in the days that followed. Her boss was actually the one who reported her missing on Feb. 10 when she did not report for work.

Read ongoing coverage of Dara Lee Watson's case.

Charleston County deputies found her charred SUV on a remote road in the Francis Marion National Forest earlier in the week, but since there was no missing-person report, deputies didn’t link the woman to the car. It was so badly burned it took three days to identify the owner.

After Watson’s employer made the report, police began calling the woman’s friends and family. Hedrick said he had argued with his fiancé on Feb. 6 and that she left the home on Feb. 7 and had not returned. Just over two hours after that call, Hedrick’s friends reported finding him dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The Charleston County Coroner confirmed Hedrick died from a single gunshot wound to the head, and the police incident report lists no other potential causes besides suicide.

Weekend searches in a five-mile radius of the car’s remains were fruitless. Mount Pleasant police on Monday issued a fresh flier seeking information on Watson’s whereabouts.