Mother says daughter found in suitcase was scared someone would kill her

NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. (WXMI/CNN) -- Days before her body was found inside a suitcase near a Connecticut road, Valerie Reyes called her mother terrified someone would kill her.

“She was just really scared, very frightened,” her mother, Norma Sanchez, told CNN affiliate WABC.

The 24-year-old had been living in a basement apartment in New Rochelle, New York, for some time but had recently grown anxious and even felt paranoid of being alone there.

“I'm afraid someone is going to murder me,” Reyes told her mother.

Tuesday, a group of highway workers found Reyes' body stuffed into a red suitcase in the affluent town of Greenwich, Connecticut, about 14 miles from her apartment.

Reyes went missing since the morning of January 29, police said. Neither her family nor the employees at the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Eastchester, where she had been working for nearly three years, had seen her for a few days.

The bag was about 15 to 20 feet off the shoulder of a road in a quiet neighborhood. When they opened the bag, they found a woman with her hands and feet bound, authorities said.

The Connecticut chief medical examiner's office, which assisted in identifying Reyes, had not released the cause and manner of death as of Saturday. It could take up to eight weeks before the report will be available, the office said.

Authorities urge anyone with information to call an anonymous hotline at (203) 622-3333.