Tricia McCauley, the 46-year-old actress and yoga instructor who went missing on Christmas, was found strangled to death in her car in front of a CVS in Washington, D.C., just after midnight on Tuesday.
In a news release, the Metropolitan Police Department said that the actress had been strangled by a ligature and had suffered blunt force trauma. Her cause of death was asphyxiation by strangulation.
On Tuesday, Marlboro, Maryland, resident Adrian Duane Johnson was arrested and charged with McCauley's murder after witnesses told police they had seen him driving the actress' vehicle. At this time, police do not believe that the two knew one another, and it is unclear how they first came in contact. Police believe it was likely a carjacking.
Friends and family of McCauley were first worried about her whereabouts after the actress missed a large Christmas dinner that she'd attended annually for the past 15 years on Sunday. Since she'd slept through it once before, her friends tried not to assume the worst - but after she missed a flight home to visit family the following day, they reported her missing to police.
Officers were able to track down Johnson after he robbed a CVS on Monday. When they arrived at the scene, Johnson gave them the key to McCauley's vehicle, which was found nearby with the actress' body inside.
"Tricia is gone, they have found her body," her brother, Brian McCauley, wrote in a Facebook post, according to US Weekly. "Thank you all for your work, support and love. To all of her D.C. family, I know she truly thought of you that way, thank you for being there for her all these years. Hang on to each other."
According to her IMDb, McCauley was a stand-in for Jenna Dewan-Tatum in Step Up(2006), and starred in the short films The Paper Girl (2000) and Never Dream: The Beginning (2012). A candlelit vigil was held in her honor at the yoga studio where she works on Tuesday.
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