Questions have swirled for days, and Internet sleuths have spun various theories, but newly released videos from police show Kenneka Jenkins wandering around by herself before she was found dead in a Chicago-area hotel freezer.
After an activist claimed police had given the family video showing Kenneka wandering into the freezer on her own, the family disputed they had been given such a video, and Rosemont police then released these videos, none of which show Kenneka walking into a freezer:
Jenkins’ death has been ruled an accident by the coroner. Her cause of death was hypothermia and “cold exposure in a walk-in freezer” and “ethanol and topiramate intoxication,” the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office said, according to CNN.
According to The Chicago Tribune, the new videos released September 15 by police show Kenneka “staggering alone through a deserted kitchen of the Crowne Plaza O’Hare Hotel, but they do not show her entering the walk-in freezer in which her body was found.” The police released video from nine clips and are releasing 36 more hours of it later, according to The Tribune.
You can read more about the back-and-forth that led up to the video’s release here.
“We were not sent any video that shows Kenneka walking into a freezer,” reported CBS Chicago, which also received the new videos from Rosemont police.
This is the first time that video has been released to the public in the vexing case that was not streamed by a party participant on Facebook Live.
Kenneka, 19, was found deceased in the hotel freezer after disappearing from a party with friends. One of those friends had streamed a Facebook Live video of the gathering that was widely dissected by Web detectives who insisted they heard things in the video that pointed to the possibility Jenkins died of foul play. However, police, while announcing they were analyzing videos and interviewing all people known to be at the party, did not say that Jenkins was murdered; they and the medical examiner said it was still unclear how Kenneka died, and toxicology reports are pending.
You can see the main Facebook Live video in the case here.