But wouldn't you do it closer to home, knowing that Sam was not doing a long run ?
Sorry but seems odd
Not odd if MM had that location from FindMy, which is the first thing I’d check.
FindMy shows the location of all my and my loved ones devices, iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, air pods, Mac Book, and we have air tags on the car keys and the dogs collars. Very handy when anything gets misplaced, and especially handy when your sending a ditzy aloof kid off to school on the bus with $5k with of electronics in his bag, or you have a Labrador and a Golden Retriever that like to dig under fences and go exploring. Not so handy when the battery goes flat though - shows last known location. We still have a pair of AirPods MIA, we can see last location but have torn the place apart without luck - assumed gone for ever.
We also had a family members phone stolen once, by another kid. We could see it on FindMy at someone’s house - drove up to the property, parents were in garden, kid hanging around on porch, politely asked if anyone had seen a strange phone and as it was lost and FindMy shows it at their house, showed them the map. Parents looked perplexed but, lo and behold, the kid went inside and brought it out, he said he “found it at the park and was about to hand it over to police”! Parents did not look to happy with him.
Translating this to SM situation I think it’s plausible when it became apparent SM was late back from jog, MM or kids have called, perhaps no ring at all (phone dead) and then checked FindMy which showed one of SM’s devices last known location 20km away in an unexpected place. MM would be immediately concerned, as would police once reported. If we’re me I’d go for a drive around first, I always assume the best not the worst, hope it’s something innocuous.
What FindMy doesn’t show is movement over time, eg SMs running path from start to end. It just shows current or last pinged location. To retrace the running path SM would need to be live sharing to running friends on an app like Map My Run or Strava where people post and share their training. Or more likely police have had to do it the hard way by getting whatever detailed phone and watch data they could from the telco, which I assume takes days and process and warrants.
IMO police are implying the detailed data shows SM on foot as expected until the 8am Mt Clear (location that got focus) a week ago, and then IMO the around 8am data movement changes to indicate something eg pace indicates vehicle speed not running. Or heart rate data changes. Or both. I don’t think the data stops cold there and then, due to the suggestion of pings further away. It’s a point the data changed enough to suggest that’s where things turned bad for SM.