'Drunk' teenager found dead in hotel walk-in freezer
A grieving family are demanding answers as to how a 19-year-old girl was found dead in a hotel's walk-in freezer after wandering off from a party.
Kenneka Jenkins was pronounced dead at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Rosemont, Chicago in the early hours of Sunday morning after attending a party on the hotel's ninth floor on Friday night.
Her mother, Tereasa Martin, received a call in the early hours of Saturday morning from friends who said they couldn't find Jenkins after the party.
Ms Martin said she immediately made her way down to the hotel and asked them to check the surveillance footage to see if they could locate her daughter.
Referred to the police, the increasingly concerned mother called 911 before dispatchers told her to wait a few more hours at the chance Jenkins could be out with other friends.
"We were begging for help, and no one was helping," she told the Chicago Tribune.
After Rosemont police "actively canvassed and searched the immediate area", the teenager's body was discovered in the walk-in freezer just after just after midnight on Sunday morning.
Ms Martin said police informed her that her intoxicated daughter had let herself in the freezer and couldn't get out.
"She was so drunk, that was his exact words, she was so drunk she couldn't hold herself up. She was holding on to the wall," Ms Martin added.
"I believe someone in this hotel killed my child."
The teenager's sister, Leonore Harris, insists there's more to the story.
"The freezer door is heavy. So there's no way. If they're saying she's drunk, she don't have no strength. If she had enough strength to open that freezer door, she would have had enough strength to walk straight," Ms Harris said.
The grieving family said if hotel staff had been more aware, the beloved teenager would still be alive.
The Cook County Medical Examiner examined the body, but the cause of death has yet to be determined. An autopsy is scheduled.
Newsbreak - September 11
