Students carry flowers into King Philip Regional High School in Wrentham, where Taylor Meyer attended school. The 17-year-old was last heard from when she made a cell phone call Friday, the night she disappeared.

The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski

NORFOLK, Mass. — A 17-year-old Plainville girl was found dead yesterday morning by searchers in a swampy area thick with trees, near where she had attended a drinking party after a Friday night high school football game.

The cause of death had not yet been determined, but law-enforcement officials said yesterday that there were no visible signs of trauma.

On Friday night, law-enforcement officials said, Taylor Meyer, a senior at King Philip Regional High School, in Wrentham, watched her school’s unbeaten football team post another victory, over Fairhaven, at the annual homecoming game. Afterward, they said, the girl was among 20 to 25 young people who drove to an airstrip at the abandoned Norfolk Airport where they gathered around a bonfire, drinking.

The abandoned airstrip is a place where teenagers have been known to park and hang out, so police have monitored it from time to time, Norfolk Police Chief Charles H. Stone Jr. said yesterday during a news conference, “but we didn’t have that understanding they were out there Friday night.”

At some point that night, Meyer decided to leave the party and started to walk away from the group, Chief Stone said. She was using her cell phone to call for a ride, he said.

A call from Meyer’s cell phone was made at 10:57 p.m., said Norfolk District Attorney William R. Keating. She had called either a distant cousin or a friend, but reports indicate it was difficult to understand her, he said. Cell-phone service in the rural area is “uneven,” he said.

The area is wooded and swampy, and under the cover of darkness “it wouldn’t take much to get disoriented,” Keating said.

Meyer was supposed to have spent the night at someone else’s house, Stone said, so it wasn’t until noontime Saturday that her mother began calling to try to find her. The girl was reported missing that afternoon.

“Everybody assumed that she went with someone else,” Chief Stone said, explaining the delay in reporting her disappearance.

On Saturday evening, law-enforcement authorities launched a search that included a metro SWAT team, boats, dogs and a state police helicopter.

Yesterday, Meyer’s family members were at the search site as firefighters combed the woods around the airport, at 61 River Rd., which has been closed for a number of years. In a swampy, wooded area north of Miller Street, just southeast of the abandoned runway, search dogs picked up a scent, said Keating. At midmorning, about 100 yards north of that road, they found Meyer’s body, he said.

The Medical Examiner’s Office in Boston will conduct an autopsy, Keating said. “There were no visible signs of trauma,” he said.

During the day yesterday and into the evening, students were seen carrying flowers into the high school. Grief counseling was being offered to students, according to a notice posted on the school’s Web site.

A memorial service was scheduled there for 7 last night, according to the police. The school entrances yesterday evening were guarded by police officers, who turned away a reporter.

With reports from staff writer Tom Mooney and from the Associated Press.

larditi@projo.com