I see many women going to and from their overnight jobs cleaning ofice buildings in Manhattan from my ‘hood. I know some of these women personally. Overwhelmingly they are Latina immigrants, who start their shifts just when the sun starts to set and return in the early pre-dawn before the sun has risen again. Safety is always an issue when they travel via subway, especially when they return home. This is why many travel in groups and are met at the subway by a relative. Eridania Rodríguez never got that far.

Ms. Rodriguez was last seen in a surveillance video between 7 and 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, said Daniel Ferreira, the family friend and a lawyer for the missing woman’s brother Victor Martinez. A law enforcement source said the video shows her in her uniform — a blue jumpsuit — pushing her cleaning cart into an elevator.

Also around 7:30 p.m., Ms. Rodriguez spoke to her daughter by telephone, said Mr. Ferreira, who had been informed of events by Mr. Martinez. About 9 p.m., co-workers went to look for Ms. Rodriguez when she failed to join them for dinner, Mr. Ferreira said. They searched the floors where she usually cleaned. When they could not find her, they called the police, he said.

Ms. Rodriguez’s clothes and purse were found in a changing room on the 10th floor, and her cart was found on the eighth floor, the police said.

Ms. Rodriguez, of 107 Ellwood Street, had worked for about a year in the building, a 26-floor office building near ground zero, Mr. Ferreira said.

She had told relatives that she found it unnerving to work in the virtually empty building during her shift, which ran from about 4:30 p.m. to 11 p.m., he said.

Ms. Rodriguez also told relatives that she had been afraid of a former worker in the building who had been fired about a month ago but kept returning, Mr. Ferreira said.

Now the NYPD is saying that they “fear Rodriguez is dead” and now searching a Pennsylvania landfill where the building’s garbage is taken.

Our thoughts are with the family and we hope that the fears are wrong.

Via / NY1 Noticias, NYT