Authorities charged a 21-year-old man with murder for the death of Nisaa Walcott, the 35-year-old mother dumped in a plastic storage container on a sidewalk in the Bronx.
Walcott's cousin, Khalid Barrow, was arrested and charged with murder Saturday after investigators connected the Bronx man to her death through surveillance video from her apartment building and near the site where he allegedly dumped her, law enforcement sources said.
Police located the missing mother Friday afternoon when the storage bin was located across the street from 950 University Avenue, in the Highbridge section of the Bronx.
A man who frequents the location to find things he's able to resell was the person who made the gruesome discovery after spotting a leg. The bin with the body didn't appear to be connected to the storage facility, a source said.
Detectives believe the cousin used Walcott's cell phone to throw off family members concerned about her whereabouts after she hadn't been seen for days, two senior NYPD officials said. But text messages allegedly sent from the phone weren't consistent with previous conversations.
The officials also said video reviewed by detectives appear to show the cousin at Walcott's East Harlem building, removing a large, plastic container around 12 a.m. Friday. A second individual can be seen on the video helping transport the container and unload it at the Bronx address where Walcott was found, the senior officials said.
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Friends of the East Harlem woman were devastated to learn of what happened to Walcott, who leaves behind a teenaged son.
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"She was a beautiful person, hard worker, she was a single mother, she was an entrepreneur she worked hard and she didn’t deserve this," Walcott's friend, Luz Droz, said.
Candles placed outside her apartment are part of a growing memorial for the mother as devastated family and friends grapple with the loss of the 35-year-old.
"The way she died did not represent who she was as a person," her friend, Delia Soto, said. "She's full of life, full of everything that makes people happy. She sees you sad, she smiles with you."
The investigation is still active and no cause of death has been determined at this point.
