Person of interest identified after body parts found in the Bronx, Yonkers
New surveillance video offers potential clues to the gruesome crime
LONGWOOD, The Bronx (WABC) -- At least one person of interest has been identified in connection to a case involving a burning body found in a shopping cart in Yonkers.
Police traced the murder to a five-story tenement in Longwood through a series of surveillance videos like one obtained by Eyewitness News that shows two men wheeling an apparently heavy object in a shopping cart.
The shopping cart is similar to the one found burning on a desolate street in Yonkers at 2 a.m. on Monday.
Inside the shopping cart was a dismembered human body. One source familiar with the investigation told Eyewitness News that the corpse's teeth had been torn out and its fingers cut off.
Police later discovered that the corpse was transported to Yonkers aboard a Metro-North commuter train.
Eyewitness News has learned that the men boarded the train at the Melrose station roughly one mile from the apartment and that the corpse had been frozen.
When police searched the apartment, they found the victim's legs in the freezer. The hands were found in a crockpot filled with bleach. In addition, police say drug paraphernalia and a gun were found in the kitchen of the apartment.
A woman who lives in the building heard loud noises that she says sounded like someone was carrying something heavy down the stairs.
"It seemed like it was heavy," she said to Eyewitness News in Spanish. "And I heard the voice of a man who was telling another man to hurry up."
Late Wednesday afternoon, police officers recovered the surveillance video from the corner bodega.
Police say one person of interest has been identified, but no one is in custody.
The building's super told Eyewitness News the whole thing is horrifying.
"I'd never expect something like that in 34 years. So this can happen in any building," the building super said.
The super confirmed there was one tenant in the fourth-floor apartment, but he hasn't seen the man or heard from him in more than a week.
He said the tenant recently rented a room to a second man. The super said there's no sign of that man either since the police arrived.
Authorities have not identified the victim and the medical examiner is still determining the cause of death.
The tenant was reportedly a regular at the store downstairs, according to a store worker.
The worker said she saw the tenant just about every day for the last four years and if he was the victim of this gruesome crime, nothing could possibly justify it.
"Whatever he did, nobody deserves that kind of death. Nobody," Natalie Rodriguez, the store worker said.
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