Yesterday, the body of a woman missing since last Tuesday night was found stuffed into the air conditioning vent of a Financial District buliding. The Post reports that Eridania Rodriguez's body was found "fully-clothed" and "face-down" in a 12th floor duct at 2 Rector Street, the office building where Rodriguez worked as a cleaning woman. And the Daily News has these grisly details: "Her head wrapped like a mummy in heavy-duty yellow and black construction tape, police sources said...[Her] hands and legs had also been bound with tape before she was shoved into an eye-level air-conditioning duct."
Rodriguez's family is devastated with the news. Her brother told the News that his sister was planning to leave the job this past week, "She didn't want to work there anymore because of the unsafe working conditions. She just wanted to leave." Apparently "an employee at the building recently exposed himself to his sister. The perv was transferred, but she was still spooked." Police had been searching for the Inwood resident since Tuesday; the building's surveillance footage showed her entering—but not leaving—and working on another floor. When she missed having dinner with a colleague, the colleague became alarmed.
Police have questioned Joseph Pabon, who as a freight elevator operator for the building had a key to the "restricted" 12th floor. (The floor is being renovated.) According to the Post, Pabon's criminal history includes allegedly assaulting his girlfriend "before throwing a bowling ball through her car windows in a drunken rage" in April. Though the police released him, there is surveillance on him. Pabon's sister stood up for her sibling, telling the Post, "My brother does not know her. [The police] are abusing my brother for no reason."
