The decomposing body that was discovered stuffed in a recycling bin at a Hillcrest bank near St. John’s University last month was identified Nov. 1 as a man who lived in the neighborhood, according to the NYPD.
Police revealed the dead man’s identity as Asliddin Rakhmonov, 29, who lived in a home on 165th Street just south of Goethals Avenue, just two blocks away from the TD Bank branch at 164-06 Union Tpke.
The NYPD reclassified the investigation as a homicide on Oct. 27 after the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) determined that the victim was killed by blunt force trauma to the head.
In a strange twist, the Queens office of the Chief Medical Examiner is located at 160-15 82nd Dr., just two blocks away from the victim’s home near the TD Bank branch, where a worker made the grisly discovery on the night of Wednesday, Sept. 20, after noticing a pungent smell as he was taking out the trash at around 9:30 p.m., according to authorities.
A decaying human leg was found to be protruding from a blue recycling bin adjacent to a dumpster in the parking lot of the bank branch, police said. A Crime Scene Unit van responded to the scene and the parking lot was sealed off as investigators loaded the recycling bin into the vehicle and transported it to the city’s Chief Medical Examiner’s office for further study, police sources said at the time.
Detectives from the 107th Precinct reviewed surveillance video from the bank’s security cameras to see who made the grisly deposit, according to the NYPD. A spokeswoman could add no further details of the investigation as of Wednesday. There are no arrests and the homicide investigation remains ongoing.
While Rakhmonov lived in close proximity to St. John’s University, he never attended SJU, officials confirmed.