New York police say a 24-year-old Queens woman was beaten to death at Lil Kim's birthday celebration held at a Times Square nightclub on Sunday. The body of Ingrid "China" Rivera, who had been missing since the celebrity-filled party, was found stuffed in a rooftop electrical room above Spotlight Live by a maintenance worker on Wednesday. Authorities say the club's bouncers, who have a reputation for being "really heavy-handed", are possible suspects.
"It wouldn't surprise me if it was the bouncers," Josh Johnson, the VIP host at Spotlight, told the New York Daily News. "A lot of the bouncers, if you give them a hard time, they get really tough and rowdy. They're tough guys. You don't want to mess with them. That's actually a problem at the club."
The party, which was attended by Missy Elliott, Busta Rhymes, Lamar Odom and Wyclef Jean, reportedly took a turn for the worse after Rivera got into a fight with a club manager who found her drunk in the men's bathroom, sources said. Rivera suffered a fatal blow to the back of the head, but a sexual assault was ruled out. "The truth I don't know," Rivera's mother, Ingrid Estrada, told the Daily News. "All I know is my daughter is not alive, that somebody killed her."
A spokesman for Lil Kim said the rapper did not know Rivera and knew nothing of the attack until yesterday.