The body of 37-year-old was discovered inside a large duffel bag near the iconic Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.
The lifeless body of Kelly Koike was found at approximately 7.24pm. The initial spotting of the duffel bag was made by a dog walker who happened to be in the area.
The grim discovery was made on Sunday morning close to the site of the three-day Outside Lands concert that had been taking place over the weekend. It is currently unclear if Kelly had attended the concert.
Local authorities have marked the circumstances surrounding her death as suspicious. However, as of now, no further details have been released regarding the case. The police have not yet disclosed the cause of death and are yet to make any arrests in connection to the incident.
The details surrounding how Kelly came to be inside the duffel bag have also not been disclosed. The discovery left family and friends devastated. Kelly's mother, Roya Koike, said: "She had so many aspirations" and a "really big heart."
San Francisco 49ers have Brock Purdy plan which impacts Tom Brady's NFL futureKelly Koike graduated from Castro Valley High in 2004 and pursued her passion of cooking by attending culinary school in San Francisco. However, her mother shared that Kelly had been struggling with multiple mental illnesses and had faced challenging times in recent years.
"I know deep deep down in her.... she's a good girl. She has a messed up here (pointing to her head), but she got killed?' her mum added in an interview with ABC 7, "'Being homeless in the city, I knew something bad would happen."
According to Roya Koike, her daughter had been evicted from a San Francisco residential hotel, which led her to a life on the streets. In an effort to help her daughter, Roya extended an offer to house Kelly as long as she consistently took her prescribed medications.
Roya said that they were not only family but best friends. "She was always herself," Roya told the San Francisco Chronicle. The investigation into her death has been taken over by the San Francisco Police Department's homicide unit.
Despite the alarming circumstances, authorities have assured the local community that there is no wider threat to the public.
Elsewhere in California, police are searching for answers after a horrified mother found a young woman's body wrapped in plastic in her own son's bedroom.
Cops launched a murder investigation after the unidentified mother told them of her discovery. She said that she walked into her 26-year-old son's room in South Los Angeles just after 1 am on Sunday to investigate a "distinct gas smell," Fox 11 reported.
Responding LAPD officers arrived at the home in the 2200 block of Wall Street in the South-Central area of South LA around 1.15am on Sunday and found a 20-year-old woman wrapped in plastic. She was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics.
It's unclear how long the woman's body had been in the room before being discovered. The victim has not yet been identified, and there was no immediate word on her cause of death.
Police in California are now seeking the mother's son for questioning in relation to the suspicious death, though no arrests had been made as of late Monday morning, an LAPD spokesperson confirmed. The homicide investigation is ongoing.
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