Authorities in Orange County, Florida, confirmed Tuesday that the human remains found in Orlando over the weekend belong to Miya Marcano, the 19-year-old college student who went missing last month.
A cause of death for Marcano, 19, has not been released.
“A positive identification of a female whose body was recovered in a wooded area on October 2, 2021 has been identified as Miya Marcano,” said Dr. Joshua Stephany, the chief medical examiner for Orange and Osceola counties, in a statement Tuesday. “This case is currently under active law enforcement investigation and any further requests for information, including cause and manner of death, will be deferred to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.”
Marcano’s family, who reported her missing on Sept. 24 after she didn’t board a flight home to South Florida from Orlando, mourned her over the weekend after law enforcement said they were “very certain” the body found Saturday belonged to Marcano.
“She was only 19 years old. She had the whole rest of her life ahead of her,” Miya’s cousin Caili Sue said at a vigil. “I can’t even put into words how we are feeling right now as a family. I feel defeated. I feel like I failed my cousin and I don’t know how I’m going to get through this.”
The last place Marcano was seen alive was the Arden Villas apartment complex in Orlando, where she worked and lived. According to investigators, a maintenance worker at the apartment complex used a master key to enter Marcano’s apartment last Friday afternoon, minutes before she was last seen.
Her disappearance began garnering national attention when authorities found the maintenance worker, Armando Manuel Caballero, dead of an apparent suicide. Investigators also reported that Caballero, 27, had expressed romantic interest in Marcano and that she “repeatedly rebuffed” his advances.