He was set on making the trip from Arizona to Michigan.

Police said the Detroit-area man, identified in news reports as Ray Tomlinson, and his 92-year-old mother spend winters in Arizona and were heading home this week.

Tomlinson, 62, had picked up his alleged 31-year-old girlfriend from a Phoenix-area mental health facility Sunday. She was riding shotgun. His mother was sitting in a wheelchair in the back of his van. And the trio had 1,900 miles ahead of them.
They had reportedly reached New Mexico on Monday when Tomlinson nudged his girlfriend. “I just said, you know, you want something?” he told WDIV. “At this point in time she was stiff. There wasn’t jerking or moans or groans, or cries for help, she just fell asleep.”

She had substance abuse problems and may have taken oxycodone during a pit stop in Flagstaff, Ariz., said Jere Green, the police commissioner in Warren, Mich., where Tomlinson was headed.

Tomlinson said he met the woman last year, during “mosquito weather.”

He said he met her as she waited for her boyfriend to get out of the Macomb County Jail. He said that, at the time, she was homeless and living in Chesterfield Township.