Tanaya Campbell Ortiz, a former exotic dancer and mom of five found dead inside a trash can near a remote Brooklyn beach, was strangled to death, the city’s medical examiner announced Tuesday.
Following the discovery of Campbell Ortiz’s body dumped in a trash can in a parking lot at Plumb Beach, just off the Belt Parkway in Sheepshead Bay on Sept. 16, questions have swirled about whether she was a victim of foul play.
Nearly a month later the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has determined Campbell Ortiz died from compression of the neck and officially ruled her death a homicide.
Although Campbell Ortiz had retired from dancing and pivoted to event planning, her death sent a wave of grief throughout the New York City nightlife scene.
“I’m devastated,” said close friend Cassy Gorham, who met the victim when they worked in a strip club together in 2007. “She’s a very sweet girl, one of the sweetest, most funniest people I’ve ever met. Always laughing, always happy, always smiling.”
“She genuinely just did not deserve what happened to her, to be thrown out like trash like that,” Gorham added. “She deserved so much better. She’s always been a great mother and her kids didn’t deserve that either, to lose her.”
Campbell Ortiz danced under the stage name “Honey,” which suited her sweet and gentle nature, according to her friends and acquaintances.
“When somebody told me, I couldn’t even wrap my head around it,” Gorham said. “I was like, ‘Honey, no. Nobody would do anything to Honey. Honey’s too sweet.’”
Gorham recalled Honey once leaping off the stage to defend her.
“A customer punched me in my face because I wouldn’t give my phone number,” Gorham said. “I just remembered Tanaya jumping off the stage and literally holding my mouth and my face together until the ambulance got there.”
“I was bleeding all over her but she didn’t care,” Gorham added. “She had my blood all over her and she just stayed with me and helped me. That’s just that person that she is.”