Police in Seattle have identified remains found stuffed in a suitcase at a homeless encampment as those of a woman who hadn’t been seen for nearly a year.
The suitcase was found Sept. 27 by state and local workers clearing a homeless encampment near downtown Seattle, the Washington State Patrol told The Seattle Times.
The encampment, near the junction of Interstates 5 and 90, had been the site of a Sept. 25 shooting that injured a 31-year-old man. An arrest was made in that case, KOMO-TV reported.
Workers entering the area to clean up about 9 a.m. Sept. 27, after those in the encampment had left, smelled decomposition, KOMO reported — and found the body in a large suitcase.
They identified the remains as those of Shannon Marie Caslin Reeder, 37, who had last been seen a year ago, The Seattle Times reported. The King County Medical Examiner’s Office is determining her cause of death, state police said. They also did not know when she died, KOMO news reported.
She was known to live in the area and had last been seen locally in November 2023, news outlet My Bellingham Now reported.
Investigators Sunday were still piecing together a timeline of her last days. It was unclear whether she met her end at the encampment or was killed somewhere else, police said. Her family was notified,
Authorities asked anyone who had contact with Reeder in the previous year, or know someone implicated in her “untimely death and the callous disposal of her remains,” to contact detectives, according to a WSP statement obtained by KOMO-TV.