By Nathan Duke
Two men who attended a party with the 23-year-old Fashion Institute of Technology student found strangled in her Astoria apartment earlier this month have been cleared after being questioned by investigators, a police source said.
A police source said investigators had interviewed two men who had attended a party with the victim on the night of her murder, but both of them had been cleared.
The mother of Carmen Saldana-Mundo discovered her daughter’s body in her bed around 10 p.m. July 12 after returning to Astoria from Long Island, where she worked as a baby-sitter, said Ali Rodriguez, a cousin from the Bronx. The mother and daughter had moved to the United States from Mexico when Saldana-Mundo was a child and shared an apartment on 30th Avenue in Astoria.
Upon arriving at the apartment, emergency responders had found the victim unconscious. The door to her apartment had been broken, police said.
But a police spokesman said no arrests have been made in the incident and that the investigation was ongoing.
Saldana-Mundo’s death was ruled a homicide and it was determined she had died from asphyxiation, a spokeswoman for the city’s chief medical examiner said.
The victim’s family held a wake from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. last Thursday at the R.G. Ortiz Funeral Home in the Bronx. Saldana-Mundo, whose parents are divorced, will be buried in Mexico.
She had been taking marketing and advertising classes at Manhattan’s Fashion Institute of Technology as a part-time student and working as a waitress, Rodriguez said. The victim did not have a boyfriend at the time of her death, her cousin said.
On her MySpace page, Saldana-Mundo wrote she had previously lived in Las Vegas before moving back to Astoria two years ago.
The New York Post reported she had been married, but gotten a divorce. In a recent Facebook post, Saldana-Mundo had written that a man in whom she was not interested would not leave her alone.
The Post reported police had found a video of the victim leaving the party alone and intoxicated.
Reach reporter Nathan Duke by e-mail at nduke@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 156.
