Los Angeles

Body Found In U-Haul Truck Identified As 29-Year-Old Anaheim Woman

January 10, 2020 / 6:50 PM PST / KCAL News

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FULLERTON (CBSLA) — A body found wrapped in cardboard, plastic wrap, and duct tape inside of an abandoned U-Haul at a Fullerton storage facility was identified Friday as an Anaheim woman who flew into Los Angeles International Airport two months ago.

Anaheim police confirmed the deceased as 29-year-old Ashley Manning of Anaheim, whose family reported her being missing in November. Her cause of death was not immediately known pending results of a toxicology report.

According to a Facebook post by her sister seeking help finding her, Manning flew from Dallas to Los Angeles on Nov. 13 but was never seen again.

A human body was recovered from a U-Haul truck, though police will not say that it was a homicide. CBSLA)

"We have confirmation that she made it to LAX and are working with police to pull video footage to see what care she got into (and) run license plates," Taylor Manning wrote in her Facebook post.

On Friday, Manning's sister posted to Facebook saying, "As a family, we are trying to navigate this tragedy and this extremely hard time. We are thankful to everyone who shared the missing person post and have helped over the last two months."

On Jan. 8, Fullerton police responded to the 2200 block of East Orangethorpe Avenue after receiving reports of a decaying body at the facility around 2:30 p.m.

According to police, the person who rented the truck in Anaheim never returned it. The company then located the truck on a street in Anaheim and brought it back to the Fullerton facility.

"After they recovered the truck, they brought it here to the Fullerton location to do an inventory of the contents of the truck," Sgt. Shane Carringer, of the Anaheim Police Department, said. "During that inventory search, they discovered what they believed to be human remains, and it has been confirmed that it is human remains."

The body was later taken to a crime lab along with the truck.

"We are not calling it a homicide yet," Carringer said. "It's obviously a suspicious death, and the circumstances in which the body was found are certainly suspicious, but we're going to treat it as if it could potentially be a homicide."

Police said they would not know if there were suspects or if the death was a homicide until they identified the body and pieced together what happened.

"Detectives will piece together everybody who was in possession of the truck and the timeline that this truck was out and who had it and where it was," Carringer said.