MIDLOTHIAN, Ill. (AP) — An autopsy has found that a suburban Chicago woman whose body was discovered Wednesday in a nature preserve where she vanished two days earlier had died from strangulation.

The Cook County medical examiner’s office announced Thursday that an autopsy found that 22-year-old Vanessa Ceja-Ramirez died of asphyxiation due to a ligature strangulation.

The Harvey woman’s death was ruled a homicide. Ceja-Ramirez’s body was found Wednesday afternoon at the Midlothian Meadows Forest Preserve.

Police have said she went missing there Monday after she decided to return to a car midway through a walk in the nature preserve with her mother and friend.