Pocono News Section

NYPD Search Dunmore Landfill for Woman's Body

NYPD Search Dunmore Landfill for Woman's Body - Friday, July 10, 2009 at 6:41PM EST

Reported by: Eric Deabill
Friday, Jul 10, 2009 @ 06:41pm EST
DUNMORE, LACKAWANNA COUNTY - A missing persons case in New York City now has a connection to Lackawanna County.

More than a dozen New York City police officers spent Friday searching the Keystone Sanitary Landfill in Dunmore. NYPD officials confirm they are searching for evidence, including the possible remains, of a missing 46-year-old woman.

The police officers came to Dunmore in a NYPD bus. They left the landfill just before 4:30 Friday afternoon. They spent all day at the facility. Our cameras and reporters were not allowed on the site, but from the street, you could see investigators looking around.

Dunmore Police Chief Pat Reese spoke with reporters by phone.

"Everyone has been cooperating 100-percent with the New York City police department. We're gonna go from there," Reese said.

Even as the search was going on, workers and truckers came and went from the site.

Eyewitness News has confirmed that this case is in connection to the missing persons report of 46-year-old Eridania Rodriguez. She was a cleaning woman at a Manhattan skyscraper who was last seen on Tuesday. Police say she punched in for work, but vanished. Her purse and street clothes were later found in her locker.

Sources close to the investigation tell reporters in New York City that Rodriguez may have been killed and her remains put in the garbage. The trash from the building where she was last seen is dumped at the Keystone Sanitary Landfill, thus prompting the search in Dunmore.

Dunmore police say it is unlikely that the landfill search will continue on Saturday.