Miya Marcano.Photo: Orange County Sheriff’s Office
A body found in a wooded area in Orlando over the weekend has been positively identified asMiya Marcano, a 19-year-old college student who went missing late last month.
“A positive identification of a female whose body was recovered in a wooded area on October 2, 2021 has been identified as Miya Marcano,” Orange and Osceola Counties Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Joshua Stephany says in a statement provided to PEOPLE on Tuesday.
“This case is currently under active law enforcement investigation and any further requests for information, including cause and manner of death, will be deferred to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office,” Stephany adds.
A spokesperson for the Orange County Sheriff’s Office tells PEOPLE on Tuesday that the cause and manner of death for Marcano have not yet been determined.
Marcano, a sophomore at Valencia College, was last seen at around 5 p.m. on Sept. 24 at the Arden Villas Apartments in Orlando, where she lived and worked in the leasing office.
On Saturday, authoritiesdiscovered remains they believed belonged to Marcanowhile searching an area near the Tymber Skan on the Lake Condominiums, an apartment complex located almost 18 miles west of her home, Orange County Sheriff John Mina said during a press conference.
Investigators believe Caballero — who worked maintenance at the complex where Marcano lived — had expressed a romantic interest in the college student before she vanished, but was repeatedly rebuffed.
“I think that it is a situation where someone had developed a romantic interest,” Mina said at a press briefing last week. “Obviously, Miya wasn’t interested. We are still trying to investigate all the circumstances behind this and what exactly happened regarding her disappearance.”
Armando Manuel Caballero.
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“We now know that a maintenance-issued master key FOB, which Caballero was known to be in possession of, was used to enter Miya’s apartment on Friday afternoon at about 4:30 p.m.,” Mina said. “This would have been about 30 minutes before she finished her shift at the apartment complex.”
Marcano’s family became concerned for the teen when she never boarded her flight to Fort Lauderdale on Sept. 24. “Her last response was at the 5 o’clock hour and that was it,” her father, Marlon Marcano, previouslytold PEOPLE. “Her phone was off since then.”
“She had an hour left for work,” recalled Marlon, who was flying into Fort Lauderdale from Los Angeles. “I told her I loved her, and text me when she got off of work. I will still be flying. She replied back ‘love you too,’ and that was it.”
Marcano’s cousin previously said that the familyfound signs of struggle in her apartment, noting that the bedroom was found in “disarray” with jewelry on the floor and the bed unmade. The family also said that blood was found in the area.
An arrest warrant for Caballero had been issued before authorities found him dead at his apartment in Seminole County.
“As a community, as a sheriff, as a father, we are grieving the loss of Miya,” Mina said in a press conference on Saturday. “Again, we can’t imagine the pain and anguish that Miya’s parents, the family the loved ones, the friends and really our entire community have gone through and will continue to go through. On behalf of the men and women of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, we offer our deepest condolences to Miya’s parents, her family and her loved ones.”
source: people.com
