Quiet returned to a southeast Houston neighborhood after residents awoke to the sound of sirens Friday morning. Jan Rich went outside to investigate.
She recalled, "I saw ambulance personnel tending to someone on the ground and so my first thought was a walker or a jogger had had some kind of heart trouble or peril."
Rich would later be told it was a woman, partially nude and barely alive, dumped in the street. Now she's dead and no one seems to know who she is. Residents are baffled.
Resident Brad Pearl said, "There are cars that drive down, there's graffiti that's put on, sometimes speeding cars, tires burning, but I've never heard of anything like this before."
The victim is described as a Hispanic woman in her 30's or 40's. Her body was discovered in the 4100 block of River. She reportedly had on a white shirt and a man's hooded sweatshirt.
It's not clear how the woman died, but residents fear her death could turn into a murder investigation.
"It's sad, it's very disappointing," Rich said. "It's, I guess, indicative of our time. I hate for this neighborhood to have something like that happen."
An autopsy will be performed to determine the victim's cause of death. Police say if they can't identify her through fingerprints, they will release a sketch to the public.
