The Elkhart County community mourns the loss of Councilwoman Tina Wenger

 

ELKHART COUNTY, Ind -- County officials mourns the loss of Councilwoman Tina Wenger and describes it as shocking when hearing about the sudden loss.

"Shock. Sadness. Probably a major combination of those two," said Elkhart County Councilman Adam Bujalski.

Elkhart county councilwoman Tina Wenger described by her colleagues as someone who didn’t hold back.

"Tina was a definitely a fire-brain and fireball in her council, which i think every political group needs to have at least one of those," said Bujalski.

She held her position as councilwoman since 2017 and after being re-elected in 2020, she was expected to hold the position until 2024.

"She brought so much energy and zeal to the position and she truly wanted to server. So her absence will absolutely be missed and honestly, I feel so bad for her family right now. It’s so close to the holidays. It’s just a sad thing," said Elkhart County Commissioner Suzanne Weirick.

County officials say they had no idea of anything that may have been wrong with councilwoman Wenger.

It wasn’t until she missed consecutive meetings, that caused council members to raise an eyebrow.

"The council became a little concerned on Wednesday after she missed our finance meeting when there was a portion of the meeting where were expecting her to speak about. And then when she didn’t show up on Saturday and some other stuff that we had talked about as a group, it was all concerning and that’s when we decided to do a welfare check and that’s when we started to find out what was going on,": said Bujalski.

"We got to lots and lots of maybe almost too many meetings together and when a person like her is not there, she’s not there asking her questions, taking her pictures, it was just odd for her to miss those meetings," said Elkhart County Sheriff Jeff Siegel.