Student Dead at Crash Scene Was Murdered

A real life episode of CSI!!!!

Student Dead at Crash Scene Was Murdered: "Student Dead at Crash Scene Was Murdered

Cops Say Young Woman Found Dead Monday Along River Embankment Was Asphyxiated
By DAVID SCHOETZ

May 9, 2008—

A 20-year-old North Carolina college student found dead next to her car at the edge of a wooded river embankment was murdered, authorities announced Thursday.

Preliminary autopsy results found that Irina 'Ira' Yarmolenko, a sophomore at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, died of asphyxiation, David Belk, police chief in Mount Holly, N.C., said at a press conference.

A jet skier on the Catawba River spotted Yarmolenko's body around 1:15 p.m. Monday. She was in the grass next to the open door of her 1998 Saturn, which had crashed into a tree stump at the water's edge.

'There's a car that's run off the embankment and a body laying there,' a frightened caller told a 911 dispatcher. 'I don't know if they're alive or not.'

Belk, who this morning was responding to a possible tornado that touched down during severe weather overnight, did not immediately return a call from ABC News.

He said Thursday, however, that he did not yet know whether Yarmolenko was sexually assaulted before her murder. He declined to provide details about the condition of her body.

'That's the part I'm not going to talk about,' he said, according to the Gas"