Jason Nark has an article at the Philadelphia Daily News about a sad discovery in Philadelphia:
The gray sedan barreled into the South Philly shopping center, parked diagonally across the painted lines with a sudden jerk and, when the door swung open, a mother's grief spilled into the autumn air.Rico says no one should be dumped like that...
Bystanders in the Columbus Commons shopping center had already witnessed a surreal scene unfold, watching police examine the naked, bloody body of Crystal Goodwin, visible among the litter and weeds behind a warehouse on Delaware Avenue near Dilworth Street.
Carol Goodwin showed up minutes after her daughter had been taken away, and she sat halfway in her car and stomped her feet on the asphalt, pleading for words no parent could bear to hear. "Is it a girl? Is it a girl? Is it my daughter? No, no, don't tell," she screamed, tugging at the shirt of a Medical Examiner's Office employee.
Strangers who'd been picking up wine for dinner or just passing through the parking lot stood silently as Goodwin got out and went with police, and some held their hands to their mouths.
"It's just too much to take. It's too sad," said Tonia Mills, 46, of Delaware County, as she walked back to her car with her sister. "It's Thanksgiving. It's terrible for this family."
Police at the scene declined to comment, and a department spokeswoman would confirm only the initial information: a woman's body was found behind the warehouse before 2 pm yesterday with what appeared to be a laceration to the right rib cage. Two young women who had discovered the body and called police declined to comment when they were brought back to their car at the shopping center after being questioned.
Later, at Goodwin's home about a half-mile away on Daly Street near Front, family members confirmed it was her. "She was murdered. She was murdered," said Lynda Callsen, the mother of Goodwin's boyfriend. "They told us her body was dumped there."
Goodwin, who has a daughter with Callsen's son, had fought drug addiction for a long time, Callsen said, although family had thought she'd been clean in recent months. Court records show Goodwin had been arrested numerous times, for theft, assault, and possession, with one charge as recent as August of 2014.
Callsen said Goodwin had been released from prison on Tuesday and disappeared the following day, leaving most of her belongings behind. "Her mother was going to file a missing-person's report on her today," she said outside the home.
In a tragic coincidence, two women who knew Crystal Goodwin drove yesterday to the shopping center for wine and a birthday cake. After seeing police cars, yellow tape and the body amid the debris, they both grew frantic, saying a local woman had been missing for days. One of them said she was Crystal Goodwin's aunt. "Was the tattoo on her lower back?" the woman asked the crowd. A woman named Dineth, 38, from Northern Liberties, had been shopping for Thanksgiving supplies and tried to describe the brief glimpses she caught of Goodwin's tattoos.
Police looked at pictures on the aunt's cellphone for several minutes and the women repeated "it's not her" over and over while making calls to Goodwin's family from another phone. Then an officer approached. "We're going to need you to take a ride with us," he said to Goodwin's aunt.
Dineth said she couldn't leave and go about her normal Sunday after that. "I don't want to be desensitized to something like this," she said. "This is real. This is the world we live in."
On Crystal Goodwin's spare Facebook page, there was an older photo of her smiling, holding her young daughter above the water in a swimming pool. Last night, as it grew dark, friends were posting condolences on her wall. In that South Philly shopping center, her mother's car still sat where she'd parked it and everyone was gone.
No comments:
Post a Comment
No more Anonymous comments, sorry.