Authorities have recovered the body of a 25-year-old Ohio woman inside a vacant home in Slavic Village after she went missing last week in downtown Cleveland, police say.
Anastasia Hamilton’s body was located at 4 p.m. on Wednesday near the 3660 block of East 54th Street, WOIO reported, citing the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office. The cause of death has not been determined.
Hamilton was last seen on May 21 at 10:15 p.m. inside a terminal parking garage in Tower City “under suspicious circumstances,” according to Crime Stoppers. A reward of up to $2,500 was being offered for any information that led to the whereabouts of the missing woman.
She was spotted on surveillance footage on May 21 walking next to an unknown male, police said. Her mother, Melissa Romanello, told authorities that she had never seen the man, who hasn’t been identified.
Romanello told ABC5 that she knew something was not right after her daughter didn’t answer her messages or calls.
“Sunday, I texted her at 9:30 in the morning asking if she wanted to come over and help me organize my closets. I didn’t hear back from her,” Romanello said.
“I had no response from her,” she added. “We chat around six times a day. We FaceTime on a daily basis. We are simply really tight and on the phone frequently.”
On Monday, Romanello called K&D Properties at Terminal Tower—her daughter’s workplace—to ask if she was working that day, or if any of her colleagues had seen her.
Hamilton’s co-workers told Romanello that her daughter’s car was in the parking garage, but she did not show up for work, which her mother described as “very uncommon.”
She then immediately notified the police to report her daughter missing.
“I started panicking because the cops were able to ping her phone to a location, and it was over near the steel factory in Cleveland, and I couldn’t comprehend why her phone would be over there,” she told the network.
Anyone with information linked to the case is asked to call the Cleveland Division of Police at (216) 621-1234 or Crime Stoppers at (216) 252-7463.
