Aspiring Model from NYC Found Dead in Jamaica

By Jack Phillips
December 1, 2017 Last Updated: December 1, 2017
Desiree Gibbon. (GoFundMe)

An aspiring model from Queens, New York, was found dead in Jamaica, according to CBS News.

The mother of 26-year-old Desiree Gibbon, said that she left her Hollis, Queens, home in October and was staying at the family’s resort in Montego Bay. She wanted to make a documentary, CBS noted.

On Sunday, Oct. 26, her body was found 4 miles from the resort on the side of the road. Foul play is suspected. Locals spotted the woman’s body in the bushes and told the police, the New York Daily News reported.

“My belief is it was a cold, calculated, planned out murder,” mom Andrea Cali-Gibbon was quoted by CBS as saying. “It wasn’t a random act of violence. It is somebody she knew, somebody she trusted, and somebody who betrayed her.”

“We were very close, so you can imagine, when I got the news, ‘devastated’ doesn’t begin to describe it,” she added to the Daily News. She called her daughter a world traveler who taught English to children in Brazil at one point.

“She wanted to travel to countries and try things and experience cultures,” the mother said, adding that her father is Jamaican.

The father, who was not named, told the Jamaica Observer: “She had to have been lured from that hotel because she had nothing on her.” He said that everyone liked his daughter, saying she had a good heart.

Her parents set up a GoFundMe page to raise the money needed to transport her body back home. They raised thousands of dollars in a few days.

“I asking you all to please help me and my [sister] at this very [difficult] and heartbreaking time. My niece was murdered in Jamaica very brutally and we need to get her home as soon as possible!!!! Please help!!!! Thank-you all!!!! (sic),” the GoFundMe page said.

“I am astounded at your generosity,” Cali-Gibbon said, according to the Daily News. “There are just no words for this tragic event. We are destroyed and broken beyond repair.”

According to the Daily News, the Jamaica coroner’s office will now figure out the cause of the model’s death.

The publication reported that she competed in beauty pageants, modeled, and even acted.

 

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