A Brooklyn mother of four was found dead, her body chopped up and stuffed inside a black plastic bag, inside a NYCHA apartment building following a night out with friends, her husband and police said Monday.
The death of Michelle Montgomery, 39, is being investigated as a murder, though her cause of death has not yet been determined.
“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 about 9:35 a.m. Sunday by NYCHA workers in the trash compactor room at a Borinquen Plaza building on Bushwick Ave. near Seigel St. in East Williamsburg. The room is normally kept locked and is off limits to residents, a building worker said.
“We found out last night she was chopped up,” a distraught relatives who declined to give her name said.
Echeverria said his wife had gone out with friends Saturday night and had posted video of herself twerking shortly after 11 p.m. inside of Mama Taco, located on Flushing Ave. about a 10-minute walk from where her remains were found.
“She said she was just going out with friends,” said Echevarria. “I didn’t know them.”
Montgomery had no criminal history, police said.
“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 the other just 10 months old, and two daughters, ages 12 and 11, who she lived with at the Gowanus Houses nearly four miles from where her body was found.
“(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 shocked a body was discovered 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 been watching 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 found was the scene of a gruesome double murder in 2008 in which a woman was fatally shot by her abusive boyfriend, who was then shot dead shot by the woman’s vengeful father.
With Theodore Parisienne
