Facebook videos surface after Chicago woman found dead inside hotel freezer

ROSEMONT, Illinois (Fox 32 News) - The body of a young woman from Chicago was found inside the freezer of a hotel in Rosemont early Sunday morning.

Kenneka Jenkins, 19, had told relatives she was attending a party at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Rosemont on Friday night.

Jenkins’ friends were unable to find her by the time they left, so they called her mother, Teresa Martin, who went to the hotel herself to search. Her mother said it wasn't until her third visit that she was able to convince hotel staff and police to look at surveillance video, which she said she was told showed her daughter clutching a rail as she walked toward the walk-in freezer.

However, she said broken cameras directly above it prevent anyone from seeing her daughter enter the freezer.

“(Police) said she stumbled her way into the freezer,” Martin said, a fact she said she found difficult to believe.

Martin said she works with a similar freezer at work, and said her daughter was simply not strong enough to open the heavy doors and enter it by herself.

“If she could barely hold up herself, how could she just yank these double doors?” she questioned.

Injected into the mystery Monday was a series of videos online, one of them coming from Facebook. That video, reviewed by FOX 32, shows a woman sitting in sunglasses as she stares at a cellphone camera as someone, possibly Jenkins, is seen sitting across the room in the reflection of her sunglasses.

Rosemont police told FOX 32 the posts are under review as they seek to identify everyone in the videos.

An autopsy was performed on Jenkins' body Sunday, a spokesperson for the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office said.

The spokesperson said the cause and manner of her death are pending “further study.”

Jenkins’ family said she had recently got a job at a nursing home, was planning to enroll in school, and had planned to become a lawyer.

“Your whole life just gone,” said her sister, Lenore Harris. “You think she's going to a party and she's just gone. I wish it could have been me and not my sister.”

“It’s unbelievable,” said Martin.