A woman was found dead under a bridge from a possible 'structural quirk' in the overpass shortly after she was reported missing in Kansas City, Kansas.
Kansas Police Department were dispatched to a report of a deceased person in an industrial area at approximately 9.45am on Friday, October 23, police said in a news release.
The body found was identified as Monica Rivera, a 24-year-old single mother of two.
She was found just north of Southwest Boulevard and under the 7th Street Trafficway Bridge.
There is a possibility that a structural quirk in the bridge could've caused a fall, police told The Kansas City Star (KCS).
Police Spokesperson Nancy Chartrand told KCS: 'It kind of looks like it’s one continuous bridge deck, but there’s actually a gap. If you were trying to go from one side to the other, you could possibly fall.'
Rivera's aunt Cassie Bennett started a petition to close the gap between two sections of the bridge to prevent further accidents.
'This fatal accident could have been avoided if the city had taken timely action to ensure the safety of its citizens,' Bennett wrote.
'This is the outfit she was in the night she came up missing. Please find my friend and bring her home safe to her babies,' Monica Rivera's close friend Madison Nolan wrote on social media
Monica Rivera, 24, was a mother of two children
A roadside memorial was set up underneath the Seventh Street Trafficway Bridge where Rivera's body was found last Friday
After Monica Rivera was found dead shortly after she was reported missing, a memorial was set up and attended by community members under the 7th street bridge in Kansas City, Kansas
'Bridges are vital infrastructures, designed to connect us, not to endanger our lives. The gap on the 7th Street Bridge symbolizes a failure in maintaining our city’s safety standards,' Rivera's aunt Cassie Bennett wrote under the petition she started asking the city to fix the gap in the bridge
'Bridges are vital infrastructures, designed to connect us, not to endanger our lives. The gap on the 7th Street Bridge symbolizes a failure in maintaining our city’s safety standards.
'Unfortunately, it took the unimaginable loss of my niece to highlight this pressing safety concern,' Bennett wrote.
Rivera's close friend Madison Nolan asked for any information about her missing friend to be forwarded to her the day that Rivera was found dead.
'I don't know where she's at. I know she was let out of a car on Southwest Boulevard and it doesn't take long to get to her house from there,' Nolan wrote on her Facebook page, 'something isn't right, she doesn't have her phone.'
The exact circumstances of Rivera's death were not publicly released.
The incident remains under investigation by KCKPD. Major Case Unit. Anyone with any information on the matter is urged to call 816-474-8477. All tips remain anonymous and may qualify for a cash reward, police said.
