Police have captured two persons of interest after a New York woman was allegedly killed by squatters and stuffed into a duffel bag in her apartment.
Two people tied to the death of 52-year-old Nadia Vitels were captured in York, Pennsylvania on Friday by the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force, the New York Police Department told Fox News Digital.
Pennsylvania officials told Fox News that the two people in custody are teenagers, but no other details were immediately available.
Vitels was found in her apartment, located on East 31st Street in Manhattan, unconscious and unresponsive inside the bag on March 14, 2024, at about 4:30 p.m.
Nadia Vitels, 52, was found dead inside a duffel bag at her new apartment on East 31st Street near the intersection of 3rd Avenue on March 14. (Nadia Vitels on Facebook)
The 52-year-old mother was preparing the apartment after recently returning from Spain – it was owned by her mother and had been vacant for three to four months, according to ABC News.
Instead, she found a man and a woman living inside. The apartment had no front door, with only an elevator opening into the space, according to the outlet. It is still unclear how they accessed the space.
Police discovered the body when Vitels’ family requested a welfare check after not seeing her for 48 hours. Michael Medvedev, Vitels’ son, found the duffel bag under a coat in the woman’s closet when the superintendent of her building let him look around, according to the New York Post. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
The New York medical examiner determined the Russian native’s cause of death to be blunt-force trauma, the New York Daily News reported. Her manner of death is being investigated as a homicide.
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“We believe that some squatters took the apartment over and this woman came home . . . and walked in on the squatters that were there,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said, as reported by the New York Post.
Vitels sustained the trauma after a struggle broke out and she was slammed against the wall by one of the intruders, ABC News reported.
Police, who have not publicly identified the suspects, said that they were searching for two individuals who were seen on surveillance video fleeing from the apartment in Vitels’ Lexus SUV.
Police stand outside of the building where Vitels’ body was discovered. (Gardiner Anderson/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
The duo fled across the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey, then on to Pennsylvania, where they crashed the SUV in Lower Paxton Township, the New York Post reported.
Despite a crash occurring in the township, the NYPD was not alerted until the next day, because the Pennsylvania police did not immediately run the plate to learn that the vehicle was wanted in connection to a homicide, Kenney reportedly said.
Police also said the duo visited several local car dealerships after the crash to attempt to purchase a vehicle for $1,000.
Police sources previously described the suspects as a man and woman in their 20s.
“As of right now, we have probable cause. We have two subjects, we have the Regional Fugitive Task Force actively hunting as we speak,” Kenny said, noting one of the squatters had been arrested previously.
Vitels grew up in Moscow, then moved to Stillwater, Oklahoma, for college, her son said at her funeral on Monday, the Daily News reported.
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She landed a job as a marketer for a nonprofit after attending graduate school in Miami, then for camera company Canon and cellphone company Nokia. She loved tennis and ran tennis star Maria Sharapova’s candy line, the Daily News reported.
