A Brooklyn mother of four was discovered dead, her body chopped up and stuffed into a black plastic bag, inside an NYCHA apartment building after a night out with friends, her husband and police said Monday.
Michelle Montgomery’s death, at 39, is being investigated as a murder, albeit the cause of death has yet to be determined.
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“Everybody is in shock,” the victim’s husband, 37-year-old Anthony Echevarria, told the Daily News as he gathered with the victim’s family to mourn. “Things are running through my head like a broken record. We’ve been holding each other ever since (we found out).”
The discovery was made at 9:35 a.m. Sunday by NYCHA workers in the trash compactor room of the Borinquen Plaza building on Bushwick Ave. near Seigel St. in East Williamsburg. A building worker stated that residents typically cannot access the room due to its usual closure.
“We found out last night she was chopped up,” a distraught relatives who declined to give her name said.
Echeverria said his wife went out with friends Saturday night and posted a video of herself twerking shortly after 11 p.m. inside Mama Taco on Flushing Ave., roughly a 10-minute walk from where her body was discovered.
“She said she was just going out with friends,” said Echevarria. “I didn’t know them.”
Police said Montgomery has no criminal past.
“It’s horrible,” said a neighbor of Montgomery who declined to share her name. “We partied together, our kids played together. She liked to go out and have a good time when she got a break from work. What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s gruesome,” she added. Why would anyone want to do this?”
Montgomery had two sons, one 19 and the other barely 10 months old, as well as two daughters, ages 12 and 11, whom she resided with in the Gowanus Houses, about four miles from where her body was discovered.
“(Her children) showed me no emotion,” said Echevarria, who is father to Montgomery’s youngest boy. “I don’t think they believe this is really happening. She was a loving and caring mother.”
“That was my friend,” said the victim’s next-door neighbor in the Gowanus Houses, who declined to give her name. “I knew her since I’ve been in the building, for seven years. She’s funny. It’s just shocking to hear what happened.”
The victim worked for Amazon and “was making Valentine baskets, Easter baskets as a side hustle,” that neighbor said.
Residents of Borinquen Plaza were surprised to discover a body there.
“It’s strange,” said resident Michael Batista, 41. “The building is good. I don’t know. It’s surprising.”
“There’s cameras and it’s a big building,” she added. “They have to find something.”
Rebecca Davila, 57, has had her back since the discovery.
“It was scary to go downstairs — you just can’t believe something like that happened in your building,” she said. “In the 15 years I lived here, I never seen anything like that.”
The building where she was discovered was the site of a heinous double murder in 2008, in which a lady was tragically shot by her abusive boyfriend, who was then fatally murdered by the woman’s vindictive father.
