Investigators determined that 19-year-old Kenneka Jenkins died accidentally after she was eventually found inside a hotel freezer, hours after her disappearance was reported. During a party, Jenkins became separated from the group. Security video later showed her walking alone through the building, visibly unsteady, before entering an unused kitchen area. She was not seen again. After her mother repeatedly urged for help, police and hotel staff conducted a search of the premises. Her body was later located inside the freezer by an employee checking the lower-level rooms. Read the full story in the links below.

Inside the Hours Before Kenneka Jenkins Was Found in a Hotel Freezer

Posted November 23, 2025

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On the morning of September 10, 2017, the world woke to a headline that would soon ripple far beyond a Chicago suburb.

 

A young woman — bright, joyful, and barely nineteen — had been found lifeless inside a hotel’s walk-in freezer.

 

 

Her name was Kenneka Jenkins.

 

But to her mother, to her friends, and to the thousands of strangers who would later chant her name at protests, she was far more than a headline or a case file.

 

She was a daughter.

 

She was a life unfinished.

 

She was a story the world still struggles to understand.

It began on an ordinary Friday evening, the kind that so many teenagers look forward to — a night of music, laughter, and gathering with friends.

 

Kenneka had been invited to a hotel party on the ninth floor of the Crowne Plaza in Rosemont, just outside Chicago.

 

She left her home with the kind of excitement that belongs to youth, telling her mother she would be safe, she would be home soon, and she loved her.

 

Her mother, Tereasa Martin, did what mothers do — she smiled, reminded her to be careful, and watched the door close behind her with a quiet prayer in her heart.

 

What none of them could have known was that the next twenty-four hours would fracture their world.

The party grew crowded, loud, and chaotic.

 

Videos later posted online would show flashes of music, dancing, and young people packed into a small room — thirty or more, according to some accounts.

 

In those videos, people would later search for clues, shadows, reflections.

 

Anything that might explain what happened after midnight.

 

Because sometime after 1 a.m., Kenneka vanished.

 

Her friends claimed she wandered off.

 

Some said she was drunk.

 

Others admitted they lost track of her in the confusion of the night.

 

But no one — not one person in that room — knew that she was walking toward the last moments of her life.

The hotel hallways captured pieces of her final journey.

 

On surveillance footage, she can be seen walking unsteadily, her steps heavy, her limbs slow, as if her body were wrapped in fog.

 

She bumped into walls.

 

She stumbled forward, pausing as though trying to remember where she was.

 

She walked alone.

 

Always alone.

 

At 3:32 a.m., cameras recorded her entering an empty, dimly lit kitchen in the hotel’s lower level.

 

It was a place guests were never meant to wander.

 

A place with no staff working at that hour.

 

A place with no cameras pointing toward the cooler and freezer doors.

What happened after she crossed that threshold is lost to the silence of the early morning.

 

But what is known is this — she never walked out.

 

Back upstairs, her friends noticed she was missing.

 

They searched hallways, knocked on doors, retraced steps, called her phone again and again.

 

Nothing.

 

By dawn, panic replaced the fading thrill of the party.

 

When her mother received the call, she felt it immediately — a mother’s alarm, the instinct that something was wrong.

 

She drove to the hotel within minutes.

 

She begged the staff to check the cameras.

 

She begged them to help her search.

 

But she was told to wait.

She was told her daughter might simply be “sleeping it off.”

 

She was told to give it time.

 

Time.

 

Hours of it passed while a teenager lay in a freezer below the floors where her mother stood.

 

Hours passed while every minute mattered.

 

When police were finally alerted, they searched public areas of the hotel.

 

They walked the lobby, the stairwells, the visible spaces.

 

Still, no one thought to look behind the swinging doors of an unused kitchen.

 

Not yet.

It would take nearly 24 hours before a hotel worker, making his way through the lower level, spotted a form in the freezer.

 

He froze.

 

Then he ran for help.

 

By 12:24 a.m. on September 10, police confirmed what no mother should ever have to hear.

 

Kenneka was gone.

 

Her body, cold and silent, showed no signs of a struggle.

 

No injuries consistent with assault.

 

No indication that anyone else had been with her in those final minutes.

 

An autopsy later revealed hypothermia as the cause of death.

A deadly mix of alcohol and topiramate — a medication used for epilepsy and migraines — had impaired her ability to think clearly, move steadily, or find her way back.

 

She had not been prescribed the drug, yet the amount in her system fell within therapeutic range.

 

The combination, medical examiners said, could cause confusion, disorientation, impaired judgment — all of which could have drawn her deeper into danger.

 

And once inside the freezer, the cold would have taken her fast.

 

Hypothermia is silent.

 

It clouds the mind.

 

It numbs the body.

 

It confuses the senses, making it difficult to escape even if the exit is just a step away.

In those conditions, even the strongest cries for help become quiet.

 

The world did not accept the autopsy quietly.

 

Thousands questioned how a teenager could wander into a restricted area undetected.

 

Protesters gathered outside the hotel demanding answers.

 

Strangers held candles at vigils.

 

Conspiracy theories exploded online — fueled by videos from the party, by the absence of camera footage in the crucial moments, by the pain of a community that felt something was deeply wrong.

 

 

 

But amid the noise, the grief, and the chaos, one truth stayed constant.

 

A mother had lost her child.

 

A family had lost their heart.

 

An entire city had lost a young woman full of promise.

 

At her funeral, nearly 1,000 people came to say goodbye.

 

Some had known her since childhood.

 

Most had never met her.

But they came because her story had touched them, unsettled them, demanded that they bear witness to a tragedy that should never have happened.

 

Her mother sat in the front row, clutching tissues and memories.

 

She later said that she could still feel her daughter’s presence — in every breath, in every silence, in every song played during the service.

 

Funerals are meant for closure, but there was no closure here.

 

Not for a life ended at nineteen.

 

Not for a story with so many unanswered questions.

In the months that followed, the family filed a lawsuit against the hotel.

 

They argued that the freezer had padlocks nearby — locks that could have prevented entry.

 

They questioned why no one had searched sooner.

 

They asked why the cameras did not cover crucial areas.

 

They asked, again and again, why their daughter had been left to die alone.

 

And though investigations concluded there was no foul play, no assault, no evidence of anyone forcing her to consume alcohol or drugs, the pain of the community remained.

 

Because sometimes tragedy is not the result of a crime.

 

Sometimes it is the result of a chain of small failures.

Failures of judgment.

 

Failures of response.

 

Failures of humanity.

 

Kenneka’s story is one that lingers — not only because of how she died, but because of what her death revealed.

 

It showed how quickly a joyful night can slip into nightmare.

 

How vulnerable a young woman can be when those around her fail to protect her.

 

How deeply a community can mourn a stranger.

 

And how fiercely a mother can fight for the truth, even when the truth is unbearable.

Today, when people speak her name, they do so with sorrow but also with love.

 

They remember a smile that lit up rooms.

 

They remember a daughter who deserved better.

 

They remember a young woman whose final walk should never have been her last.

 

And in remembering her, they hope — hope that no other family will stand in a hotel lobby begging for answers.

 

Hope that no other child will wander alone into danger.

 

Hope that the world will listen, learn, and do better.

Because behind every headline is a life.

 

And behind Kenneka’s story is a lesson written in grief:

 

Every child deserves to be safe.

Every mother deserves to be heard.

And every disappearance deserves urgency, compassion, and truth.