Activist: Video Shows Kenneka Jenkins Walk Into Freezer Alone

By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 15, 2017 3:27 AM CDT
Updated Sep 15, 2017 6:20 AM CDT
Activist: Video Shows Kenneka Jenkins Walk Into Freezer Alone
The Crowne Plaza hotel in Rosemont, Ill.   (Alyssa Pointer/Chicago Tribune via AP)

A Chicago activist says he has seen proof that some of the darker theories surrounding the death of teenager Kenneka Jenkins are untrue. Andrew Holmes says he has watched surveillance video that shows the 19-year-old walk into the Crowne Plaza hotel's walk-in freezer by herself, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. "We all was wondering and wanted to know: Did anybody pull her down there?" Holmes says. "Did anybody force her down there? Was anybody on the other side in that room when she got down there? And the answer to that is 'no.'" After a party at the Rosemont hotel Friday night, Jenkins' friends said around 4am that she was missing. Her body was found in the freezer almost 24 hours later.

Holmes, a community activist who has often worked with police, tells the Chicago Tribune that detectives showed him the video. He says it shows Jenkins wandering around a lower level of the hotel, apparently disoriented, opening several doors before entering the freezer in a part of the hotel that was undergoing renovations. Protesters gathered outside the hotel for a second night Thursday, accusing police and the hotel of failing to respond to the disappearance quickly enough. Jenkins' mother, Tereasa Martin, thanked the protesters. Earlier, she said she had not yet watched surveillance video that police said they would share with her. The hotel says it has offered to pay for funeral expenses. (More Kenneka Jenkins stories.)

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