Sintia Mesa's friends and relatives spent the weekend hoping the missing woman would be found alive. Yesterday, her sister passed out fliers near the Randallstown beauty salon where the woman, and her car, had last been seen.
Within hours, the car, and the 25-year-old woman's body were found.
Mesa's body was discovered in the trunk of a car in the parking lot of the Park Place Garden Apartments in Northwest Baltimore, city police said.
It was unclear yesterday evening where or how Mesa died, authorities said.
Mesa, a Hyattsville resident, was last seen about 2:30 p.m. Friday leaving a hair appointment at Coco Brown Beauty Salon, said Claudina Mesa, 30, one of her sisters. She said her sister routinely went to the salon.
"I was still texting her when she should have been in the salon," she said. "I was like, 'OK, when she jumps in the car she'll jump on the phone.'"
She said she grew more concerned when she learned that her sister missed a nail appointment an hour later, and a mandatory meeting at her job that evening. She said that her sister was a 2003 graduate of Morgan State University and was working at a salon in the Cross Keys area of Baltimore.
When Claudina Mesa hadn't heard from her sister by 9 p.m. that night, she called police, she said.
Over the weekend, Sintia Mesa's cell phone was found in a garbage bin, police said yesterday. Pointing to the continuing investigation, they declined to give the location of the garbage bin.
About lunchtime yesterday, Claudina Mesa and some of her friends distributed fliers near the beauty salon in Randallstown. At one point her eyes widened when she spotted a Toyota Solara almost identical in color and design to her sister's, parked in a spot near the hair salon. She eyed the car's side door, searching for a dent that she knew was on her sister's car.
"Oh God," she cried before realizing it wasn't her sister's car.
"I know she's coming home," she said.
Shortly before 2 p.m. yesterday a caller told authorities that Mesa's silver 2004 Toyota Solara had been spotted in the parking lot of the Park Place Garden Apartments near the 7200 block of Brook Crest Way, officials said.
When police arrived, they opened the trunk of the car and found Sintia Mesa's body inside, said Donny Moses, a city police spokesman.
About 4 p.m. yesterday a cluster of Mesa's friends huddled and wept behind yellow tape in the apartment complex's parking lot as police investigated the scene and authorities towed the car.
Kathleen Cooper fought back tears.
"The world is just a sick place, just a evil place," Cooper said. "As a Christian, I can't hate, but I hate the devil within."
nick.shields@baltsun.com