Miya Marcano Case: Body Believed to Be Hers Is Found, Sheriff Says

U.S.|Body Believed to Be Miya Marcano’s Is Found, Sheriff Says

A assemblage believed to beryllium Miya Marcano, a 19-year-old assemblage pupil who was reported missing past month, was recovered successful Orlando, Fla., connected Saturday, the authorities said.

Ms. Marcano had been missing since Sept. 24, erstwhile she was past seen successful a reddish garment and jeans astatine the Arden Villas flat analyzable successful Orlando, wherever she worked and lived, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office said.

On Saturday, searchers recovered what they believed to beryllium Ms. Marcano’s assemblage successful a wooded country adjacent Tymber Skan apartments successful Orlando, astir 20 miles from the flat analyzable wherever she lived, the authorities said.

“Our hearts are broken,” John W. Mina, the Orange County sheriff, said astatine a quality league connected Saturday.

The sheriff said officials could not yet place a origin of death. “Although we are precise definite of the identity, the affirmative recognition volition person to travel from the aesculapian examiner’s office,” helium said.

The authorities person said that Armando Manuel Caballero, 27, was a “person of interest” successful Ms. Marcano’s disappearance. Mr. Caballero was a attraction idiosyncratic astatine the Arden Villas apartments and had expressed a romanticist involvement successful Ms. Marcano but she “repeatedly rebuffed” him, Sheriff Mina said astatine a quality league connected Thursday.

Mr. Caballero had initially told investigators that helium past saw Ms. Marcano astatine 3 p.m. connected the time she was past seen.

Investigators obtained an apprehension warrant for him due to the fact that a maintenance-issued maestro cardinal fob, which Mr. Caballero was known to beryllium successful possession of, was utilized to participate Ms. Marcano’s flat connected the Friday day she was past seen, the sheriff said.

On Sept. 27, officers recovered Mr. Caballero dormant from what appeared to beryllium termination successful the Camden Club Apartments successful an Orlando suburb. The sheriff’s bureau past labeled him the premier fishy successful her disappearance.

Cellphone records showed Mr. Caballero was adjacent the Tymber Skan apartments — wherever the remains believed to beryllium Ms. Marcano’s were recovered — connected the nighttime that she was reported missing.

“He was determination for astir 20 minutes,” Sheriff Mina said. “Nothing successful the records bespeak that helium ever returned determination anterior to sidesplitting himself.”

More than 60 detectives had been moving connected the case. Search efforts spanned 3 counties and included 175 people, helicopters and dive teams. The F.B.I. announced connected Friday that it was helping the sheriff’s bureau with the case.

Sheriff Mina said officials believed “pretty conclusively” that Mr. Caballero was responsible, adding that they would not beryllium looking for different radical successful transportation to the case.

“As a community, arsenic a sheriff, arsenic a father, evidently we are grieving the nonaccomplishment of Miya,” helium said. “Again, we can’t ideate the symptom and anguish that Miya’s parents, household and loved ones and friends — truly our full assemblage — person gone done and volition proceed to spell through.”

On Saturday morning, Ms. Marcano’s father, Marlon Marcano, said connected Instagram that his bosom was broken. “I request it to beryllium full again,” helium said.

Ms. Marcano’s disappearance follows that of Gabrielle Petito, a achromatic pistillate who was reported missing past period and whose wide publicized lawsuit raised caller questions astir the tens of thousands of women and girls — many of them Black, Latina oregon Indigenous — who are reported missing each twelvemonth and spell unnoticed.