No arrests have been made in the case so far.
The body of a Los Angeles model was found in her downtown apartment last month stuffed in a refrigerator, with her wrists and ankles tied and mouth gagged, according to the latest autopsy report obtained by the New York Post. 31-year-old Maleesa Mooney was found dead in her luxury apartment on September 12. The LA County Medical Examiner’s Office had ruled her death “homicidal violence” earlier this month, but the grizzly details of how her remains were discovered in her apartment were released on Friday in an autopsy report obtained by The Post.
According to the outlet, Ms Mooney had been beaten and bound before being stuffed into her own refrigerator. The autopsy also revealed blunt force trauma to parts of her body and her toxicology tests showed traces of cocaine and alcohol in her system.
“The blunt force traumatic injuries observed at autopsy are generally not considered acutely life-threatening on their own,” the medical examiner wrote in the autopsy report. “However, based on the circumstances of how Ms. Mooney was found, these injuries suggest she was likely involved in a violent physical altercation prior to her death. Given this, the role that drugs and/or alcohol may have played in Ms. Mooney’s death, if any, is uncertain,” the report added.
No arrests have been made in the case, PEOPLE reported.
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The 31-year-old was found dead in her apartment last month after her mother called cops to perform a “welfare check” on the model. When officers entered the apartment, they found a pool of blood beneath her body, which was “wedged in the refrigerator,” the outlet reported.
Based on the blunt force injuries found all over her body and the condition she was found in, the officials deemed the manner of her death a homicide. There also is evidence that the model was strangled, the officials said.
Ms Mooney’s sister, Pauline, told PEOPLE that her sister was two months pregnant when she died and had always wanted to be a mom. “She was super excited and I know she really wanted a kid, and it’s something that she has always talked about,” she told the outlet. She also said her late sister’s boyfriend was “heartbroken” about the incident.
Meanwhile, Ms Mooney’s death spurred fear in local residents, especially after another model in the downtown LA area was found dead in her apartment. But despite similarities in the two cases, police have said that the two incidents are not related.
Nichole Coats’ family members feared their 32-year-old daughter also was murdered, but an autopsy report released on Tuesday showed she had died of an accidental overdose of cocaine and alcohol.