Kenneka Jenkins - death in the hotel cold store

 Kenneka Jenkins was born on May 27, 1998, in Chicago. The teenager lived in the largest city in Illinois all her life and graduated from Voise Academy High School there. The girl had a very good relationship with her mother, Theresa Martin. The teenager's father, Kenneth, died a few years before her death (I have not been able to establish the cause of her death). The mother was a secretary and previously worked in gastronomy. Shortly before his daughter disappeared, Martin underwent a mastectomy for breast cancer. Jenkins looked after her mother during this difficult time. Kenneka also had an older sister, Leonora Harris, and a younger brother, Kenneth Jr. (called Kenny).

The main character of our story was described as a smiling, thoughtful and intelligent girl. Apparently, she did not go to parties very often, and when she was going to them, she almost always informed her mother where she was and when she would be back. There is an exception to every rule, and it was so this time.

On Friday, September 8, 2017, Kenneka told Theresa that she wanted to meet friends she had known since her third grade in elementary school. The girls were to go bowling and then to the movies to celebrate Jenkins finding a job in a nursing home. It was a job the 19-year-old wanted to do, so there was a lot to celebrate. Due to the late hour, Kenneka borrowed the car from her mother and left the house around 23:30.

But all four did not go bowling or to the movies that night. Instead, the girls attended the birthday party of schoolmate Irene Roberts. The place was quite unusual (especially for Polish realities). The guests enjoyed themselves in room 926, which was located on the 9th floor of the Crowne Plaza Chicago O'Hare Hotel in Rosemont, Illinois. It is worth adding that the room was rented two days earlier by two unknown people who - as it turned out later - used a stolen credit card.

The video surveillance shows all four entering the hotel just after 1:00 am on Saturday night, September 9th. Friends shared their live coverage of the event on Snapchat and Facebook. In fact, the girls weren't really having a particularly good time, especially Jenkins. At 1:30 am, Kenneka sent her sister a text message (according to other sources, they spoke on the phone). As it turned out later, it was her last contact with her family.

Around three in the morning, the friends decided to leave the party. Kenneka then realized that she had left her belongings (including car keys and cell phone) in the hotel room. Some sources say the girls left her alone near the hotel lobby on the ground floor. According to others, Jenkins noticed her belongings were missing shortly after leaving the party room and stayed in the 9th-floor hallway by the elevator.

In any event, the three friends went to retrieve Kenneki's belongings and left her alone. The girls were gone for 10 to a maximum of 20 minutes. When they returned to where Jenkins had left, she was gone. The teenagers started looking around the hotel trying to find Kenneka, but they failed. They finally decided to call her mother to let her know they couldn't find Jenkins. It happened around 4:00. The girls hoped that their friend might have returned home in the meantime. However, this did not happen.

A nervous Theresa showed up at the hotel around 5:00. She wanted to find Kenneki herself. Her companions seemed to be hiding something. She also noted that the teenagers were drinking alcohol and possibly taking drugs. Kenneka's mother went to the front desk and asked for help. She wanted to see the surveillance footage. The hotel staff declined, however. They said they could only do so at the request of the police. Then the members of the missing family started searching on their own. They checked hotel corridors and knocked on guests' doors to ask if they had seen Kenneki. Of course, the Crowne Plaza authorities did not like it. So the family had to end their activities.

At 7:14, Theresa called 911 about her missing daughter. The dispatcher initially downplayed the matter and advised Theresa to go home, rest, and wait a few more hours for her daughter's return. Eventually, at 12:46, Kenneka was officially reported missing and the police began investigating. Several officers went to the hotel to check the surveillance footage, specifically the exit cameras. However, they failed to find evidence that Kenneka had left the building. Around 8:30 pm, the police began checking other tapes as well. Eventually, they came across videos of a missing woman wandering around the hotel. You can clearly see that the 19-year-old has serious problems with maintaining balance, probably due to too much alcohol (as shown in the video below).

It was established that around 3:25 AM Kenneka left the elevator and found herself on the first floor. It was an area accessible to hotel staff. Jenkins was hanging around the kitchen that was being renovated. All utensils were taken from it. Probably due to someone's negligence, the place was not closed to unauthorized access. The famous shot, which shows the 19-year-old girl alive for the last time, shows her disappearing from the frame. You can also see the opening of the door to the cold store. Oddly enough, it was still on, despite the fact that no one was using the kitchen at that time because of the renovation. Apparently, the reason was that defrosting such a cold store is more expensive than maintaining the required temperature in it.

It is worth adding that we have not been able to find a recording showing Jenkins entering the refrigerator. The reason is prosaic - there was no camera monitoring this place. For this reason, several conspiracy theories have emerged. According to one of them, someone deliberately locked a teenager in this room. However, it is very unlikely, because the recordings only show the missing one. It is also worth adding that the cameras did not record the events all the time, but they turned on when they detected some movement. Conspiracy theorists claimed that someone might have cut the alleged murderer out of the tapes. It is unlikely. First, there wasn't much time to tinker with the monitoring. Secondly, the perpetrator would probably have to be someone from the hotel staff who would also have access to the recordings.

The girl's body was finally found. However, this was not done by the police, but by a hotel employee. This took place on Sunday, September 10 around 00:25. It turned out then that the missing girl was frozen. It is worth adding that the cold store was not extremely cold. It was found that the lowest possible temperature could be -13 ° C. Kenneka, however, spent several hours there and was not dressed appropriately for such conditions. She was also in such a state that she probably fell asleep quickly, thanks to which the body cooled down more easily.

It was controversial as to why the teenager even got there. It is supposed that she was so intoxicated that she was desperately looking for a way out. Even if she didn't know she was going into the cold room, why didn't she get out of it? First, it was dark inside. The light switch was outside, and the teenager probably did not know about it and did not use it. It was also found that the door of the cold store was opening quite atypically. It was necessary to press the knob, not to turn it, as is usually the case. It is worth adding that Jenkins' mother and sister, who worked in gastronomy in the past, argued that a drunk person would not have the strength to open the massive door of the cold store. The materials I found, however, showed that it is not that difficult.

At 5:10 am, the girl's body was taken to the forensics facility. A report on the matter was released on October 6. The coroner said the cause of death was hypothermia. It was marked that the death resulted from an accident. No visible injuries were found on Jenkins' body. Alcohol and prescription drugs were found in her blood. The presence of drugs, however, is so strange that Jenkins did not take any measures on a permanent basis. This was, of course, another argument that third parties were involved in the death of the 19-year-old.

The mother of the tragically deceased girl could not come to terms with the official cause of death. She blamed the hotel staff, the police, and partly herself. If the 19-year-old had been found earlier, she might have survived. Unfortunately, this did not happen.

Despite many theories that assumed the participation of third parties, most likely it was not so. In any case, from this tragic story, one can draw the conclusion that you should never overdo it with alcohol and pay attention to your party companions.