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Phoenix PD: Woman arrested on overpass, man found dead at home

PD: Woman detained, man found dead at home
Posted at 5:10 PM, Jan 14, 2018
and last updated 2018-01-16 16:46:55-05

Police are investigating after a Sunday morning disturbance on a freeway overpass led to a body found in a central Phoenix home.

Investigators say around 9:30 a.m. officers responded to reports of a woman acting erratically at the overpass of the Loop 101 at 23rd Avenue.

Arizona Department of Public Safety troopers and Phoenix officers responded and detained the woman, later identified in official paperwork as 23-year-old Zynia Lolita Chapman. She directed officers to her home near 19th and Glendale avenues and, according to paperwork, told officers that she killed her boyfriend the night before.

Officers found the 25-year-old man dead at the home with obvious signs of trauma. Chapman reportedly stabbed him repeatedly after he arrived home from work. Documents show Chapman wrote an entry in her journal on Friday, detailing her plans to kill him and then herself. 

The first person on the scene to help the woman, Megan Harper, told ABC15 the woman had a gash on the right side of her neck and told Harper she was trying to "carve" her neck first in a suicide attempt before getting on the overpass. 

"We saw her sitting on the ledge with a scarf wrapped around her head,” said Harper. “I was just trying to make small talk with her. She had a nose ring like mine and I was like ‘Oh, you pull it off really well.’ Just trying to get her off. 'Oh, you look nice, were you going to work?”

Harper said the woman seemed very distressed. 

"She said that she had spent the morning trying to mutilate herself like in her neck and she said that she had killed her boyfriend the day before and that she deserved to go to jail,” said Harper.

Chapman was taken to the hospital with minor injuries and later booked into jail on one count of first-degree murder.