ALABAMA – Lamona Fields Bender, who left her two young children on the side of a road in Elmore County, Ala., to go looking for God, was found dead in a river.

The 28-year-old mother abandoned her children, a 5-year-old boy and 2-year-old girl, in her vehicle on last Monday afternoon. The children were found naked and wandering two miles away from where

Fields had parked her car. They were unharmed.

Police received a call from a fisherman who had remembered seeing Bender.

Police suspect Bender was distressed, went wading in the river, and drowned.

Although an autopsy has not been performed, authorities believe that the young woman took her own life. Police investigators found no bruising or wounds of any kind on her body.

According to Bender’s family, she had been “going through a tough time,” so officers suspect that she was probably emotionally fragile and at a breaking point. She had lost her mother and a young child in 2009. Bender was also going through a legal ringer, battling for the custody of her 10-year-old daughter in court.