Features

Missing girl’s car found torched in East Bay

Daily Planet Wire Service
Wednesday October 09, 2002

LIVERMORE – The recent disappearance of a teenage Livermore girl took an ominous turn when her car was found engulfed in flames in the middle of the night outside a remote tavern in rural Alameda County, authorities said Monday. 

Firefighters were called just after 2 a.m. Monday to the Mountain House Bar on Grantline Road, where Jenna Simons' 1989 Ford Mustang was fully afire in the parking lot of the roadhouse, which was closed for the night. 

Simons, also known as Jenna Nannetti, is a 17-year-old emancipated minor who has been missing since Sunday night, when she told a relative in Livermore she was going to Concord. She has not been seen or heard from since. 

“It's very suspicious and we're very concerned for her safety,” Alameda County Sheriff's Lt. Kevin Hart said. 

Hart said Simons did not say whom she was going to see in Concord, and it is unknown if she ever got there. Despite her age, Simons was known at the tavern where her car was torched. 

“It's kind of a close-knit group of people that frequent that bar,” Hart said. 

The Mustang was completely destroyed in the fire and the authorities did not find anyone nearby. The cause of the fire has not been determined. 

Investigators from the sheriff's office and the Livermore Police Department have been conducting interviews and searches, but they don't have much to go on.