The husband of a woman whose body was found in a Pennsylvania dumpster has been arrested for her death, police said Tuesday.
Police busted Rolando Corte, 42, charging him with the murder of 39-year-old Lucrecia Jadan Sumba of Elizabeth, N.J. If convicted he could face life in state prison.
Sumba’s friends and family had reported her missing last week when the mother of four didn’t report to her job at a nail salon, they recounted in a fundraising post. They had also gone to her house and spoken to her husband, who “stated that he did not know where she was and seemed very disinterested of her whereabouts.”
Cops investigated and found her body Saturday in a “trash receptacle” in 2,500-population Coopersburg, Pa., about eight miles south of Allentown near the New Jersey border.
An autopsy revealed she had died of “sharp force” injuries, according to the Lehigh County Coroner, who ruled her death a homicide.
Corte was arrested Sunday and held at the Union County Jail pending a court appearance Thursday.
The Union County Prosecutor’s Office Homicide Task Force, Elizabeth Police Department, Coopersburg Police Department, and the Lehigh County District Attorney’s Office collaborated in the investigation, the prosecutor’s office said. The investigation is ongoing, and authorities requested any tips the public might be able to provide.
Sumba was mourned as a hardworking mother who served as “tia,” or aunt, to most of those in her orbit — and who doted on her four children. She had come to the U.S. from Ecuador in 2021 hoping to secure a “better future for her family,” the fundraising organizers said.