Oregon woman bought sleeping pills before going missing

By Courtney Sherwood PORTLAND Ore. (Reuters) - A missing Oregon stay-at-home mother of two young children bought sleeping pills and snacks on an errand run in her small community before she disappeared, but she did not buy enough pills to harm herself, police in Oregon said on Wednesday. The sudden disappearance of Jennifer Janelle Huston, 38, last Thursday has bewildered police for the nearby communities of Newberg and Dundee, in a rural area where she lived and was last seen. With no solid leads and no reason to suspect foul play, officers on Wednesday resorted to patrolling rural roads in and around those two small communities about 20 miles southwest of Portland as they looked for signs her sports utility vehicle may have crashed, said Newberg-Dundee Police spokesman Captain Jeff Kosmicki. Huston last Thursday told her husband, Kallen, she was going to run errands and then left him at home with their 6-year-old son and their toddler, Kallen said earlier this week. Shortly before she went missing, Huston bought the over-the-counter sleeping pills and snacks at a Rite-Aid drug store in Newberg, Kosmicki said. Huston experienced unusual, but not debilitating, headaches for three days before she disappeared, and otherwise nothing was out of the ordinary, Kallen Huston said earlier this week. Police say they do not consider him a suspect, and they are working to obtain Jennifer's medical records. "We do not have a direction to look," Kosmicki said in an email. He added that police are simply trying to find Huston or her car and "trying to exhaust all possibilities." Video surveillance has captured Huston withdrawing $100 from a local credit union and stopping at the Rite-Aid on Thursday, then filling her vehicle's tank at a gas station, police said, and she appeared to be alone in the family's Lexus SUV. But police said the footage gave no hints about where she might have headed, and they have called on authorities in neighboring counties to assist in the search. (Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Eric Walsh)