The on-going investigation of the death of Kenneka Jenkins continues to spark outrage as questions continue to go unanswered and speculation arise.
Rosemont officials released new details late Wednesday, September 13 about their investigation into the death of the 19-year-old, as they will share hotel surveillance video with her mother. Rosemont Mayor Bradley Stephens revealed local police are working with outside agencies to investigate Jenkins’ death, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Tereasa Martin, Mother of Kenneka Jenkins
Jenkins was attending a party on the ninth floor at the Crowne Plaza Chicago O’Hare Hotel & Conference Center in Rosemont, a suburb of Chicago, when she went missing early Saturday. Jenkins last spoke to her family at 1:30 am on Saturday, according to Oxygen, when she spoke to her older sister, Leonore Harris.
Her family arrived to look for her, after Jenkin’s friends called her mother, Tereasa Martin from her cell phone, telling her she could not be found when it was time to leave. Martin arrived to the hotel around 5:00am, but was told she would have to file a missing persons’ report before she could view surveillance tapes.
According to authorities, her body was found in a walk-in freezer in a vacant part of the hotel that was under construction after a 11-hour and 24 minute search.
Jenkins was pronounced dead just before 1 a.m. Sunday, September 10.
On Wednesday, September 13, Rosemont police released a statement, describing their on going investigation, reviewing thirty hours of video from 47 surveillance cameras at the hotel, as well as videos posted on social media. Some of the footage is being analyzed by forensic technicians.
Police told Martin that Jenkin’s death may have been an accident, saying she may have entered the freezer by herself while inebriated. Martin, her family members and social media, aren’t buying it.
“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,” Harris, Jenkins’ sister, told WGN.
#JusticeforKenneka has since went viral.
Crowne Plaza Hotel – Rosemont, Illinois
In addition to the hotel footage and the Facebook live video from inside the room from Jenkins friend Irene Roberts, 21, who has since turned herself in, went viral, the video has been dissected from social media with theories and speculation as police are interviewing eight people who were at the hotel when Jenkins went missing. The video has since been viewed over 3 million times. Four others “who were involved in some way” are also being questioned. Commenters allege they can hear someone screaming in the video and a woman yelling “help me.”
Although the case is not being investigated as a murder or criminal case, it’s “still an active death investigation. Our detectives are working around the clock to identify, locate and interview all persons who were involved,” the police statement said.
The Cook County medical examiner has yet to release an official cause of death. On Wednesday, a spokeswoman said that new information still won’t be available for weeks, pending the police investigation.
