Seventeen-year-old Sydney Causey was called “Jailbait” by the friends she lived and partied with, a nickname signifying her youth among the group.

Causey disappeared in mid-June when running behind a friend and wanted criminal who was fleeing from who he thought were cops on national forest land in Queens Canyon west of Colorado Springs. Her body was found two days later, on June 13.

She died of complications from diabetes, according to an autopsy report from the El Paso County Coroner’s Office.

An El Paso County Sheriff’s Office report chronicling the days leading up to Causey’s disappearance and death tells the convoluted tale of a loose-knit group of young adults making a series of decisions that left Causey dead and another teen clinging to life in a Colorado Springs hospital.

The report offers glimpses of a lifestyle marked by estrangement, drug use, couch hopping and living in cars, of youth ill-equipped to handle the serious situations they put themselves in.

Cali Williams last saw Causey, her best friend, the night of June 6 as Williams left the McDonalds at 30th Street and Colorado Avenue, where the friends both worked. Causey was waiting for 21-year-old Brandon Fargerson to pick her up in Williams’ car, a 1995 green Chevy Lumina with spray painted flames on the sides. Causey, Williams, Fargerson and 18-year-old Michael “Monk” McElroy had been living out of the car for three weeks, Williams told sheriff’s investigators.

Williams spent the next week trying to get her car back from McElroy and Fargerson, to no avail. She told investigators that by June 10 she figured they were ignoring her phone calls so they didn’t have to give her car back.

On June 11, Williams awoke to a phone call from a friend alerting her that Williams’ car was involved in a crash. She later learned that McElroy was thrown from her car when it rolled on Interstate 25 near the Fontanero exit in the hours before sunrise.

What Williams did not yet know was that her car had carried her best friend and ex-boyfriend into the mountains and left them there without the insulin on which Causey so highly depended.

According to the incident report, Causey went with Fargerson, McElroy and 20-year-old Van Autrey to Queen’s Canyon sometime in the morning of June 10.

There, the group hiked around a rock formation called the Punch Bowls and Causey and Fargerson got high on meth and weed, Autrey told investigators.

The accounts from the group vary on what happened next. Autrey said he and McElroy wanted to leave because they were out of water and used a probation appointment and a doctor’s appointment as an excuse. Causey told them to take the car, Autrey said. Fargerson told investigators Causey told McElroy and Autrey to come back for them at dusk.

As dusk came, Fargerson became paranoid that people with flashlights in the area were cops, and, not wanting to be arrested on a series of outstanding warrants, began to run, frequently turning back to encourage Causey to keep up.

Then, Causey was gone.

“Fargerson said he was unable to find her so he went to sleep at the bottleneck of the first punch bowl. Fargerson said he chose to sleep there because Sydney knows to head downstream to get out of there and she would go by him and he would find her,” Deputy William Otto wrote in the report of his interview with Fargerson.

The next morning, June 11, Fargerson hiked out of the canyon and called for a ride at the Garden of the Gods Visitor Center. He was taken to a friend’s house, where he ate and fell asleep.

He told friends, and later investigators, that he figured Causey would make her way out of the canyon.

“Fargerson told me he is not sure how the diabetic thing works,” Otto wrote.

Causey’s father reported her missing June 12 after she missed a flight to visit her mother in Texas.

Search and Rescue crews found Causey’s body the morning of June 13. Her signature orange Converse sneakers were laying next to her body.

Causey had methamphetamine, amphetamine and chemicals associated with marijuana use in her system, according to the autopsy report. The coroner also found a tumor in Causey’s liver.

Her mother, Ann Lanzante, was told by the coroner’s office that Causey likely fell, due to a large number of scratches and bruises on her body.

The fall did not kill her, though.

Lanzante said Sydney relied on insulin shots to fight her diabetes.

“If she didn’t have her insulin with her, she couldn’t have survived,” Lanzante said Wednesday.

Rikky Miller, 19,  who was driving Williams’ car when it crashed, is facing vehicular assault charges.

McElroy remains in a coma at a Colorado Springs nursing home, according to his mother’s Facebook page.

-Gazette writer Jakob Rodgers contributed to this report.

Sydney Causey, 13, left, and Sami Loper, 14, enjoyed pancakes at the plaza in Santa Fe, N.M., on July 4, 2006. Photo by COURTESY OF LUIS SANCHEZ SATURNO, THE NEW MEXICAN

Luis Sanchez Saturno, The New Me