A Teen Was Found Dead In A Hotel Freezer Hotel After She Went Missing From A Party
Jenkins was pronounced dead at 12:48 a.m. Sunday after her body was discovered in the freezer of the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Rosemont, Illinois, according to the Cook County medical examiner.
"The cause and manner of death is pending further studies," a spokesperson for the medical examiner told BuzzFeed News on Monday.
Jenkins was last seen leaving her home in Chicago for the party at around 11:30 p.m. on Friday, the Rosemont Public Safety Department said in a press release.
Jenkins' sister last texted with her at 1:30 a.m. Saturday and witnesses saw her at the party on the ninth floor of the hotel in the early hours of Saturday, police said.
Her friends told her mother, Teresa Martin, early Saturday morning that they were unable to find Jenkins at the hotel, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Her family filed a missing person complaint around 3:20 p.m. on Saturday, according to Rosemont Police, who contacted the hotel and made the staff aware of the complaint.
The Crowne Plaza hotel staff and management "actively canvassed and searched the immediate area," police said. They discovered Jenkins inside the freezer in the early hours of Sunday.
"Jenkins was beyond resuscitation and was pronounced dead on the scene," Rosemont Police said.
The police told her family that Jenkins was seen on hotel surveillance video at 3:20 a.m. on Saturday "staggering" drunk near the hotel's front desk, Martin told the Tribune.
Gary Mack, a spokesperson for Rosemont village, told BuzzFeed News that the police department was reviewing surveillance video that would "shed some light" on the incident.
According to police, Jenkins was intoxicated when she walked into the unused freezer, Mack said. However, Martin told the Tribune that she doubted the authorities' version of events as well as accounts from the friends who attended the party with Jenkins on Friday night.
Martin said that if her daughter was "staggering" drunk — as police had described her — she would have been unable to prop the double steel doors of the freezer open herself.
She also said that her friends' "stories changed over and over."
Mack said that the unused freezer was located in an under-construction area of the hotel where a new restaurant was being built.
"This is not an area where anyone would typically be who was a guest in the hotel," Mack told the Tribune.
Rosemont Police told BuzzFeed News that the incident was still being investigated and that they could not provide more details.
Jenkins' relatives and friends posted about her death on social media, with several alleging that her friends at the party were involved in her death.
"One of you lil bitches did something to my sister," Jenkins' relative said on Facebook.
A Facebook Live video — purportedly taken at the party Jenkins attended — was widely shared on social media, and appeared to record a girl's voice saying "Help me" at one point.
In several Facebook posts, Monifah Shelton, who said she was at the party with Jenkins, repeatedly referred to her as her best friend, and appeared to lash out at allegations that her friends were to blame for her death.
"She my bestfriend why would I do anything harm her man," Shelton said in one post. She also said that "all of us were drunk off our shit" and that she had done all she could to help find Jenkins in the hotel.
Shelton also featured in the Facebook Live video that was purportedly taken at the party and shared the video on her page.
"Our detectives are looking into everything and are aware of the social media video and posts," Detective Joe Balogh, a spokesperson for the Rosemont Public Safety Department, told BuzzFeed News.
With regard to foul play in Jenkins' death, Mack said that nothing had "been ruled in or out."
"The key here is the autopsy report," he said. "I'm sure the police are looking at every conceivable avenue to get to the bottom of this."
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