Belinda Gail Cartwright, 36, was reported to have died on February 22, 2001, after accepting a ride from a truck driver while hitchhiking near Lake Park. Accounts say she left the truck at a rest area or truck stop when she realized personal items — described later as photographs of her sons and a Bible — were still inside. Witness-based retellings say she climbed or clung to the driver’s side running board and pleaded for the driver to stop; the truck reportedly kept moving, and she was pushed or fell and was run over by the semi.

Her death has long been described as unresolved. Family and later coverage emphasize that the case left little closure: Cartwright was buried in Valdosta, and the scene — a truck already back on the road and a family searching for answers — remained central to how the death is remembered. Reporting repeatedly links suspicion in her case to Bruce Mendenhall after his 2007 arrest; a composite sketch in Cartwright’s case was said to resemble him, but he has not been reported as charged or convicted in her death.

Did anyone in the Lake Park area or truck-stop community know Belinda, her travel plans, or the truck involved that day?