ME Rules 27-Year-Old East Haven Mom's Death 'Homicidal Asphyxia'

EAST HAVEN, CT — The state medical examiner confirmed for Patch that the casue and manner of death of the young East Haven mother who was missing for weeks before her body was found in a shallow grave behind a Branford restaurant garbage bin was "homicidal asphyxia."

Lizzbeth Aleman-Popoca, 27, was strangled to death, the ruling means.

East Haven Police Department Capt. Joseph M. Murgo told Patch, it’s death investigation is ongoing and still active. He said investigators were still waiting on the medical examiner’s report.

“We continue to maintain contact with Lizzbeth’s family and stand with them in the fight for justice,” Murgo said.

Aleman-Popoca, mother of an 8-year-old daughter, was reported missing July 3 but had not been seen, family told Patch, since July 1. Her body was found July 16 after hours of meticulous crime scene processing by the Connecticut State Police Major Case squad, investigators armed with shovels dug carefully and methodically until the unearthed the woman who'd been missing for two weeks from her shallow grave behind garbage bins in the parking lot of LoMonaco's Ristorante in Branford.

Police sources confirmed that the father of her child and boyfriend Jonnathan Jara-Aucapina was a longtime employee and, he was not at work the night investigators found her body and "was not expected to show up." Police said their investigation led them to the Italian eatery's parking lot.

The young mom was reported missing July 3 by her family and Jara-Aucapina, the latter who said she went disappeared in the middle of the night June 30 to July 1.

Patch was on the scene for hours as investigators flew a drone, took measurements and images, and put items in brown paper evidence bags. Then at dusk, started digging an area of "disturbed" earth in the back lot of the restaurant at 990 W. Main St. in Branford.

See related: Body Found In Shallow Grave Behind Restaurant

The investigation
East Haven Police, the state police major case squad, and a number of area police departments have been working the case since July 3. Indeed, a neighbor two doors down from the St. Andrews Avenue apartment Aleman-Popoca, her husband and daughter lived in, said detectives and investigators have "been here all the time."

Aleman-Popoca's husband told police when he reported her missing that he was phoned by his daughter the morning of July 1 who said she'd awoken and her mother was not in the house. But he did not speak to police until July 3.

"My sister would never leave her baby. She would never leave her. She's her priority," said Aleman-Popoca's sister, Yaneth in an interview with Patch earlier this week.

"She would have called me. We have good communication. She wouldn't leave us, leave her family without calling to say, 'Come take care of the baby.' She's not the kind of person to randomly go missing. No."

Yaneth Aleman said that her sister was looking for another place for her and her daughter to move when she last saw her on June 29.

See related: 'She Would Never Leave' Her Child, Sister Of Missing Mom Says

And at an early July news conference, the family pleaded for the community's help in locating her, but husband Jara-Aucapina was not there.

Yaneth Aleman said her sister was a devoted mother. She said she's invested in her child's education and recently got her help in math and reading: "She's really sweet, and she has good sense of humor, and she loves her baby. She'd do anything for her. She's a good mother."
Then, two days later, the family gets the worst possible news.

"We're helpless. We don't know what to do ...what to say (except) she didn't serve this," Yaneth said in a voice wracked with grief. "We want justice. Someone knows something, and we want justice for her now."