One person is in custody after a missing Bronx woman was discovered dead in Yonkers on Thursday, according to law enforcement sources.
Pamela Alcantara, 26, was reported missing to the police on Sunday.
Her family had been searching for her for days, even posting missing posters throughout her neighborhood and outside her apartment building on Morris Avenue in the Bronx.
That was until Thursday, when Alcantara’s body was discovered near the Palmer Road exit on the northbound side of the Saw Mill River Parkway at the Yonkers-Bronx border.
Eyewitness News learned that her body was discovered stuffed inside a red suitcase. She was pronounced dead on the scene.
According to law enforcement sources, Alcantara’s ex-boyfriend is in custody at the 46th precinct.
Her family believes he is responsible for this heinous crime. They claim Alcantara was in the process of moving out, and her ex-boyfriend was the last person to see her.
“She was supposed to move, and I think he found out,” Alcantara’s aunt Isa Peguero said. “He used to put a recorder on the car and recorder in the bedroom so he can know everything what happened, what is she doing?”
“‘Mom pray for me,’ she told her last Thursday,” Alcantara’s cousin Naysa Peguero explained. “She said, ‘mom, I just want you to pray for me,’ and that was all.”
Alcantara’s aunt and cousin claim they’ve already found a place for her to live. They even bought her a car so she could leave the apartment she shared with her ex-boyfriend on Morris Avenue.
Surveillance video shows her entering the building’s elevator while on the phone with her mother shortly after midnight Sunday. There is no video of her departure.
She never attended church on Sunday.
“She went to church, came home, spoke with her mother on a daily basis, and spent all of her time with church friends and at work. “That was it,” Naysa Peguero stated.
Alcantara’s family said they went to the apartment on Monday. It wasn’t messy, but they claimed there was evidence of an argument and a struggle next to their bed.
Alcantara recently ended their three-year relationship.
“I checked her Facebook, I was telling my mom, she doesn’t have any pictures up,” she told me. “She only had her profile picture up. She wasn’t allowed to post any pictures.”
Police have not yet charged anyone or made any arrests.
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner will determine the cause of death while the NYPD conducts an investigation.
Meanwhile, outside the victim’s building in the Bronx, a small candlelight vigil has been organized.
Upstairs, the NYPD has the unit sealed off. They are waiting for a warrant to enter.
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