The dead body of a dry cleaning business owner was found in her store yesterday morning. Police say Kyung-Sook Woo, 63, who owned the Eden Dry Cleaners at 10th Avenue and Windsor Place in Windsor Terrace, was found face down in the store's bathroom. She had blood behind her ear. The medical examiner is conducting an autopsy, but police suspect foul play and were at the store late last night, still looking for evidence.
Woo was found around 8:30 a.m. by a neighbor, Dan Alman, who saw a store employee waiting outside--the stores usually opened at 7 a.m. Police say her purse was on the counter and her car, a white Honda Accord, is missing.
Neighbors who remembered Woo were shocked and upset. A woman recounted to the Times that Woo wouldn't charge her for hemming and placing buttons "because she knew I couldn't sew to save my life" and another said, "The beads on my wedding dress were just all wrong, and it was two days before my wedding. She fixed it, no problem." They left flowers and candles outside the store.
The News reports her elder son, who was worried when she didn't answer his calls Thursday night, arrived at the store "only to be greeted with word of his mother's slaying." Woo had lived in a Flushing apartment, with her teenage son (her diabetic husband, who could no longer work at the business, had moved to a nursing home). Her super told NY1, "Anytime you see her she was smiling, always had a smile on her face."
According to WCBS 2, "Neighbors say a man not from the neighborhood had been hanging around outside the cleaners for a couple of hours yesterday and the victim had recently come down to a nearby deli to ask about the man." And WNBC says, according to witnesses, a "5-foot-8 black man in his early 20s wearing blue jeans and a baseball cap" was "looking inside and outside" the cleaners. The police are calling him a "person of interest."
If anyone has information (the Honda's license plate is E H S 7392), call Crimestoppers at 800-577-TIPS.
