Police Investigating Viral Facebook Video After Chicago Teen Kenneka Jenkins Found Dead In Hotel Freezer

By Stephen Gossett in News on Sep 12, 2017 5:10PM

Kenneka Jenkins / Facebook

Authorities confirmed that police are investigating the viral video that appears to show Kenneka Jenkins seated on a bed in a hotel room hours before she disappeared. She was later found dead in a walk-in freezer in a Rosemont hotel. According to the Tribune, investigators said they have identified most of the people in the clip—which has been shared more than 50,000 times and has been viewed more than 4 million times.

The approximately six-minute clip shows shows a woman wearing mirrored sunglasses and addressing the camera. Figures can be seen reflected in her lenses at times in the video, including a woman who may be be Jenkins. The clip sparked a torrent of social media indignation, with many speculating that there was foul play in the woman's death.

Rosemont spokesman Gary Mack told the Tribune that they are reviewing the Facebook video and "all the other social media videos and posts" that might be relevant to the case."[Investigators] are leaving no stone unturned as far as trying to corral everyone they can and talk to them and interview them about what happened and what was going on that night," he told the paper.

Jenkins was found dead in a freezer at around 1 a.m. on Sunday morning at the Crowne Plaza Chicago O'Hare Hotel. She left her Near West Side home on Friday night to go to a hotel party, Jenkins' sister reportedly told police. The last time the two had contact was around 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, when the sister got a text message from Jenkins, she told the Tribune.

Jenkins' mother, Teresa Martin, reportedly got a call from her daughters' friends around 4 a.m. on Saturday in which they said they had lost track of Kenneka and left. They apparently took Jenkins' phone with them, and the car Martin had leant her daughter for the party.

Martin contacted hotel and police shortly thereafter, but her daughter's body wasn't discovered until some 20 hours after she said she first contacted hotel staff.

Questions continue to swirl around the case. Martin has expressed doubt over the police account with which she said she was presented: that Jenkins entered the freezer while drunk and died. (Police apparently told family that Jenkins was seen "staggering" drunk near the hotel front desk on surveillance video.) An autopsy was performed on Sunday but no cause of death was confirmed.

Also, there is an exit button inside the freezer, although it sometimes did not work properly, authorities found, according to the Associated Press.

Mack told the Tribune, "I don't think anything has been ruled in or ruled out at this point. It's just considered a death investigation at this point."