PORTLAND, Ore. — On the day she graduated high school in June 2019, Hayle Merchant posed for a picture next to her mom. Hayle did not know it at the time, but it would be the second to last time she would see her parents.
"I just miss them so much," she said. "Why does it have to be us? I don't want this happening to anybody because it's literally the worse feeling in the world."
Hayle's mother and father, Stacy Rickerd and Jeremy Merchant, were killed in the Mt. Hood National Forest on Aug. 12, 2019. Detectives have not said much about the case, only that Stacy and Jeremy were shot to death at what is described as an improvised target shooting area.
Hayle remembers getting the phone call while driving.
"I cried," she said. "My aunt told me to pull over and I got out of the car and I couldn't stop crying."
Hayle said it was not unusual for her parents to go to the forest. They would travel there from their home in Estacada almost daily to pick up spent shell casings to turn in for cash.
"I think they were targeted," Hayle said.
Hayle said she can't pinpoint why it happened — all she knows is how difficult the past three years have been.
"Going on three years, it's hard to see all the gun violence and everything going on in the world knowing we don't have any justice for my family," she said.
CrimeStoppers is offering a cash reward of up to $2,500 for information that leads to an arrest in the unsolved case.
For Hayle, an arrest cannot come soon enough.
"It would mean everything if we could just find out who did this and why they did it," she said. "We just want to know why."
Anyone with information about the case is urged to contact the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office, which can be done anonymously.