In what investigators suspect to be an odd suicide, a deceased woman was discovered in a jeep loaded with poisonous chemicals on Sunday, prompting police to close down Manhattan's affluent Sutton Place area.
At 11:23 a.m., police reported that they found the 35-year-old victim dead in the backseat of a black Jeep that was parked at E. 56th St. and Sutton Ave.
Workers from the city medical examiner's office removed the body from the car and will determine the circumstances surrounding the death. Her identity was not immediately made public.
The Jeep had "a variety of substances," a police source said. What sort of substances they were was not immediately apparent.
With these substances involved, it "will probably be suicide," a police source predicted.
According to a local doorman who requested anonymity, surveillance video from a nearby building saw the automobile pull into the dead-end street off Sutton Place.
The automobile was re-parked on the other side of the roadway after around 40 minutes. A short while later, she emerged from the car and started to clean it of what appeared to be dust. The moment she climbed back inside, the interior light began to flicker. Before the dead woman was found at noon, that was the last movement that was observed.
In Sutton Place, a serene affluent suburb on the East River, the grim death is unusual. There have resided some of the wealthiest and most well-known residents of New York, including Bobby Short, the Vanderbilts, Aristotle Onassis, and Marilyn Monroe.
A neighbour named Charles Karmid expressed his surprise at the presence of investigators on the street.
“Sutton Place has started acting like the rest of New York,” he said. “Nothing like this has ever happened here. This is Sutton Place. It’s a quiet neighborhood. I would never expect to see Hazmat here.”
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