RESIDENTS of 89 Maxfield Avenue were in shock yesterday morning as they woke up to find the body of a naked teenaged girl at the gates of the St Phillips Anglican Church.

The body was not identified up to press time yesterday but a police officer on the scene told the Jamaica Observer that the deceased appeared to be between the ages of 16 and 19.

“She appears to be an adolescent,” said the policeman from the St Andrew South Police Division who secured the crime scene.

A report from the Constabulary Communication Network said the body was of brown complexion, slim build, about 163 centimetres (5 feet 4 inches) long with braided extensions.

Police said the body had several stab wounds in the neck and abdomen. A bloodied underwear was found several feet from where the body lay in a pool of blood and the brassiere was cut off her body.

The young woman’s unclad body was near the entrance to the Norman Manley High School and due to police yellow tape some students of the institution were inconvenienced as they were prevented from entering school as officers tried to preserve the crime scene.

Staff at Norman Manley High, Glenhope Place of Safety and the Maxfield Park Children’s Home — all located at that section of Maxfield Avenue which is close to the communities of Frog City and McDonald Lane — were given a chance to view the corpse in a bid to ascertain the victim’s identity. However, none of the persons who viewed the body were able to identify her.

“It seems she was not from around here either as none of the residents who saw her could identify her. No one seems to know her,” a policeman said.

One man who resides at the nearby Ethiopian Orthodox Church complained that thieves were plaguing persons who traversed the road on foot and said a woman was robbed of her cellular phone and slashed several times as she made her way to work one morning about 8:00 am.

“This road is very dangerous as they rob people very regularly even in the day. We have reported this to the police and asked them to patrol the road regularly. It gets worse at night as the road is pitch dark. The thieves use the football field as their escape route,” he said, suggesting that those robbers could be responsible for the young woman’s demise.

A woman who had gathered behind the yellow tape said it was possible that the young woman was raped and killed at the spot where her body was found. “It coulda happen right there as when night come not many people walk around there,” she said.

After the police handed over the body to funeral home workers and the curious crowd converged on the spot where the woman’s body lay, a knife blade was seen at the blood-soaked earth by the residents who showed iti to the police.

The blade was retrieved and taken into evidence.

The police said vaginal swabs will be conducted on the body to find out if the female was sexually abused.