By Sophia Chang
Two workers for Ragonese Carting Corporation were making a routine pickup at the store when they spotted Stacy Sappleton's corpse, clad only in her underwear, after they began tipping the dumpster over into the truck's trash receptacle.
The Ragonese Carting driver Jimmy, who declined to give his full name, said he and his co-worker had found the body at 8:31 a.m. and immediately called the police.
“She was upside down in the truck,” said Jimmy after the pair made the grisly discovery toward the end of a shift that began at 1 a.m. and covered 80 dumpsters in the borough.
Police identified the woman, who lived in Tecumseh, Ontario, as Stacy Sappleton, a 26-year-old black woman, who was reported missing last week after she flew in to visit her fiancé's relatives in Brookville. The insurance specialist had been missing since Friday morning, when she last spoke with fiancé Damion Blair in Detroit on her cell phone as she was leaving a taxi half a block from her future in-laws' residence in Brookville, The New York Times reported.
The driver of Sappleton's cab told police he picked her up at LaGuardia Airport and dropped her off in the vicinity of the Blair residence near 146th Avenue and 226th Street, a spokesman for the Police Department said. When she failed to arrive at the house, family members and friends alerted the police and covered the neighborhood with posters bearing her photo.
Sappleton's mother, Marcia Thomas, was staying with the family in Brookville. She refused to comment when reached over the telephone, her voice heavy with fatigue and grief.
The Blair family has lived in the neighborhood for just a year, according to neighbor David Byfield, who has lived in Brookville for 20 years.
“This neighborhood is really nice,” he said. “I'm shocked to hear it. You don't know who to trust. You feel scared.”
April Daniels, who has lived down the block for eight years, said that she now has fears about walking alone. “It makes me think about when I come out early for work and school,” the 23 year-old college student said.
The victim died of internal injuries from multiple gunshot wounds in the torso, neck and arm, according to Ellen Borakove, spokeswoman for the medical examiner's office.
She said the office had not yet determined whether she had been sexually assaulted. Police did not release details on any possible suspects.
Behind the Key Foods in Bayside Monday morning, officers emptied out the remaining contents of the dumpster and the Ragonese Carting truck and sifted through the trash with rakes, at one point swabbing a purple bed sheet for evidence.
“There was a lot of blood on her,” said Jimmy, dressed in a White Sox cap and a gray long-sleeved shirt. “She was shot in the side,” he said, gesturing to a spot on his torso below the right-side ribcage.
Although police were still investigating the possibility that the body might have been placed in the dumpster at the previous pick-up stop in Queens Village before being discovered, Jimmy said we would have noticed her if she had been in the other dumpster.”
“I'm shook up. It's too bad I couldn't find a couple of millions instead,” Jimmy said with a sigh.
This was the year's first murder in the 111th Precinct, which reported two murders in 2003 in the traditionally low crime area covering Bayside, Little Neck, Douglaston and part of Auburndale.
“It's got to be a lunatic,” said Carolyn Debellis, who has lived in Bayside for nine years and considers it safe. “I sit out on the porch, I have my grandbaby outside. Usually everybody looks out for everybody.”
David Silverberg, who lives in the Windsor Park apartment complex that surrounds the back lot of Key Foods, said the lot is poorly lit at night, with little surveillance.
“A lot of kids hang out here, the 15- to 20-year-olds,” he said. “It doesn't surprise me that they dumped the body here because it's so dark and quiet.”
“It's just unbelievable,” he said, shaking his head. “Right in my backyard.”
Diane DelPesce, whose apartment in the Windsor Park complex has a window facing the back of the store with a view of the dumpster, said she had not heard anything unusual recently.
“You usually hear the dumpsters in the morning. There was no screaming.” She waved at her mother, who was peeking out of the apartment window and looking at the police cars in the parking lot. “It's not really like this here.”
Reach reporter Sophia Çhang by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 146.
