UPDATE: Body Found Just Feet from Road During Search for Michelle Le

Sheriff's investigators and Hayward police officers are investigating whether a body found in a wooded area near Pleasanton Sunol Road south of Pleasanton could be that of slain nursing student Michelle Le.

As crime lab vans and a coroner's vehicle pulled onto the scene, Alameda County Sheriff's spokesman J.D. Nelson described the area where the body was found as being just 15 feet from the road where he was standing.

The thickly wooded area sits along a creek flanked by older oak trees and is easily reached by car, sitting a few miles north of where Highway 84 meets Interstate 680 and south of Castlewood Country Club in Pleasanton, near the Pleasanton Ridge Regional Park.

The body was decomposed and the gender remains unknown at this point.

"It hasn't been there a very short time or a very long time," Nelson said.

He said investigators are using a fairly new camera that takes 360-degree pictures of a scene.

According to Hayward police, the body was found during a search organized by Le's family but that a law enforcement official was present when it was first seen and took over the search at that point.

"We are 100 percent certain it is a crime scene," Nelson said. "It's a human body."

Nelson said the agencies would conduct a joint investigation until it is determined whether or not the body is Le.

Le, 26, a San Mateo resident, was last seen May 27 at the Kaiser Hospital in Hayward, according to police. Le was at the hospital taking a class, which is part of a nursing course she was enrolled in with Samuel Merritt University in Oakland.

She told many classmates she was planning to drive to Reno after class. She left class during a break and didn't return, according to police.

Police found her car parked a few blocks from the hospital the next day, with bloodstains that were later found to be from Le.

A former friend, was arrested Sept. 7 on suspicion of murder.

Police said footage from security cameras at the Kaiser Permanente parking structure showed that Esteban was present around the time of Le's disappearance. Additionally, evidence found inside Le's car indicated that Esteban had been in the vehicle.       

Police also said cellphone records show from wireless tower activations that Le and Esteban traveled along the same path leaving the area just after Le's disappearance.        

The of the Sunol area Saturday was the second in two days and one of an ongoing series of searches organized by Le's family. The area reportedly had been searched previously by Hayward police.

While it seems as if a body in an area so close to a road could not remain unnoticed for very long, Nelson pointed to the tall weeds and brush and said if someone was walking by it could easily be missed.

Patch will update this story when further details are available.

Patch Union City Editor Zoneil Maharaj and Bay City News contributed to this report.