Authorities identify woman found dead in baggage conveyor belt at O’Hare

Officials have identified the 57-year-old woman who was found dead Thursday at Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

The Cook County medical examiner’s office Friday identified the woman as Virginia Christine Vinton from Waxhaw, North Carolina.

The death was ruled a suicide, with the cause of death being asphyxiation due to hanging, according to a spokesperson for the medical examiner’s office. Their investigation into the cause and manner of death has definitively concluded.

The woman was not an airport worker, according to Scott Allen, a spokesperson with the U.S. Department of Labor, who added that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration doesn’t have jurisdiction in the investigation.

On Thursday, Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford told the Tribune that firefighters found Vinton entangled in the baggage conveyor belt at Terminal 5 after being called to the scene at about 7:45 a.m. Paramedics pronounced her dead at the scene.

Surveillance footage at the airport captured Vinton entering an unoccupied restricted area at the airport just before 2:30 a.m., five hours before her body was found, according to Chicago police.