Police found a body at 3 a.m. this morning in the house of a missing pregnant Bronx daycare operator. The Daily News reports that the body was found in a basement crawlspace and is that of the missing woman, Andrea Caruth. The 39-year-old vanished on Sunday morning, never showing up to a brunch date with a friend, and leaving her phone, keys, and coat in her Baychester home.
A police spokeswoman said she could not confirm the identity of the deceased.
Caruth's boyfriend Lincoln Grant had recently moved in, according to News12, and told relatives he last saw her walk out of the house, the Daily News wrote.
Before the discovery of the body, friends, relatives, and police were frantically searching the neighborhood and the borough. Julia McCall, the friend Caruth was supposed to meet, told ABC7 that it made no sense that she would walk away from everything.
"She’s not the type of person to up and leave like that," McCall said. "She would not abandon her kids, her students, at all. She loves her kids. She loves her job."
News12 reported that Grant and Caruth's father are being questioned by police, though a department spokeswoman said she had no indication anyone was brought in for questioning. Caruth's family filed a missing person report on Monday, and Grant gave a teary interview to News12 then, saying, "I’m just hoping that she’s safe. I’m just praying for her safe return. Just so she knows that I miss her. I love her."
The retrieval of the corpse from the house stunned those close to Caruth.
"Initially we're thinking she’s outside, she’s missing," step-sister Indira Cox said, in a clip that has since been re-edited to omit the quote, "but she was in the house the whole time."
The cause of death will be determined through an autopsy.
