Dec. 3 (UPI) — An employee at an upscale Manhattan condominium complex has discovered the remains of a woman at the bottom of a trash compactor chute, the NYPD reported. Police are investigating if she was connected to a missing person’s report filed a day earlier.
Police say the employee discovered the remains of the 24-year-old woman Friday afternoon in the basement of the +Art condo complex at 540 West 28th Street while taking out the trash. The complex is about a ten-minute walk from Times Square.
Police identified the woman, who did not live in the building where her remains were discovered, as Jaclyn Elmquist of Brooklyn.
Video from a local TV station showed Elmquist staggering down West 28th Street late Thursday night and attempting to open several locked doors before continuing down the street. Police have not said how she got into the condo building where her remains were eventually discovered or how she wound up in the garbage compactor chute.
Police are investigating whether it was Elmquist who was discovered missing a day earlier, a case in which a woman in her 20s was reportedly last seen getting into a cab at a nearby restaurant. Police suspect the disappearance may be tied to Elmquist’s death partly because of “missing” flyers posted in the area asking for help in finding her.
“It hasn’t been determined if she was intoxicated but it’s a possibility,” an NYPD source said. “It’s being looked at.”
Elmquist worked at a recruiting company called Mission Staffing. She reportedly attended a work party in Manhattan and never made it back to her home in Brooklyn, her cousin posted on social media.
“My cousin Jackie Elmquist has been missing since last night after she left a work party in Manhattan – she didn’t come home or show up for work this morning please spread the word so people in the area can see it since all of her family lives here in Minnesota,” her cousin wrote on X.
