The body of a Chicago woman who went missing for two months after being seen getting into an Uber was discovered in a trolley, tied up, and wrapped in blankets.
Rosa Chacon, 21, was last seen entering the ridesharing outside of her South St. Louis Avenue house on January 18 when it was captured on surveillance footage, according to ABC 7 Chicago.
“She said, ‘I’ll be back, Mom. I got the Uber ride there and the Uber ride back,’ that’s what she told me,” her mother, also named Rosa Chavon, told the outlet.
She added that she didn’t take anything with her, including her coat and ID, and that she had no idea where her daughter was going or who had called the Uber.
According to a representative for Uber, the information could not be made public owing to privacy and policy concerns.
The family said they reported Rosa missing to police, but that they did little to help them.
“The cop said a crime had to be committed for them to do anything,” Rosa’s boyfriend, Alejandro Guzman, told ABC 7.
She was last seen two miles away when her body was found Wednesday about 10:45 a.m. Her tattoos allowed her loved ones to recognise her.
At an alleyway near Western Avenue and 24th Place, her remains were bound, covered in sheets, and placed inside a laundry cart.
“I don’t know how they have a heart to do somebody like that,” Rosa’s devastated mom told the outlet after the shocking discovery.
The Cook County medical examiner will determine the cause of death.
“I miss my baby,” said Rosa’s dad, Jose Lucio. “Normally when our daughter leaves, we hear from her. She calls the next day, she calls an hour after she leaves, she’s in a house, she’s secure, she’s nice and warm. But we didn’t hear anything.”
The family began working with a private detective service based in Chicago on March 6 to assist with the hunt because they felt the authorities were not doing enough.
The Richart Detective Agency published an update on Thursday after posting a missing person flier online last week.
“Working closely with the family, we located Rosa Chacon,” the agency wrote on Facebook. “Unfortunately Rosa was found deceased. With the information we had the medical examiner was able to make a positive identification on Ms. Chacon.
“We began our investigation and obtained Rosa Chacon’s phone records … We spoke to many individuals and followed numerous leads,” he told the magazine.
Richart said the body “was taken to the Cook County Morgue where it could not be identified for reasons I cannot share at this time … At that time Rosa Chacon was identified as Jane Doe.”
According to him, one of his private detectives “went the Cook County Morgue on Thursday, March 16, and presented identifiers like tattoos Rosa Chacon had,” he told Newsweek.
“After Identifying Ms. Chacon’s body, we visited the family and gave them the awful news. We believe the case is now a homicide and Chicago Police are working diligently on obtaining results,” Richart added.
The local community has offered a $15,000 reward for information that leads to a conviction.
On what would have been Rosa’s 22nd birthday, hundreds of people gathered outside a house in Little Village on Saturday to pray, observe a moment of quiet, and let balloons fly, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Gregory Chacon, her older brother, claimed that if the police had “gone out and looked,” she would have been “discovered a long time ago” but instead, “they continued telling me and my family that it was not a crime, that she’s alright.”
