Police have launched a murder investigation after the body of a jogger was found near her New York home.
Her father discovered his daughter’s body on Tuesday evening in marshland about half a mile away from their house in Queens, according to police.
The 30-year-old, identified as Karina Vetrano, had set off from her home to go for a jog on Tuesday near Gateway National Park.
It was reported that she was discovered with her trousers pulled down, and police believe she may have been strangled. They also located her mobile phone near a bike path.
The City’s medical examiner will carry out an autopsy to discover how she was killed.
Ms Vetrano graduated from St John’s University in 2015 with a master’s degree, and she was working as a caterer in Howard Beach.
On her Instagram page, she described herself as a “day dreamer” and a “thrill seeker”.
One neighbour told the New York Daily News that she used to go jogging with her father before he sustained an injury.
The case in Queens has echoes of the famous Central Park assault in 1989, when former investment banker Trisha Meili was raped and left for dead by Matias Reyes. Five black and hispanic young men were wrongly accused and imprisoned for the crime until Reyes confessed in 2002.
Although the Central Park jogger case gained worldwide notoriety, there have been multiple attacks in 2016 alone.
The NYPD told The Independent they had no figures for the number of women who have been killed or attacked while jogging, although there were a total of 93 people raped by strangers in New York City last year.
In April, a 23-year-old woman was jogging in Prospect Park in Brooklyn around 5am when a man attacked her from behind, threw her to the ground and said he was going to sexually assault her. While she fought him off, he cut her index finger with a knife.
In the same area in June, a woman walking about a block from Prospect Park was approached from behind and shoved to the ground by a man who punched her and tried to rape her. The 34-year-old fought him off until he gave up.
On 17 May, a 42-year-old woman was jogging around 7.30pm in Gorman Park in Manhattan, when she was raped at knifepoint.
