DENVER (KDVR) — A homicide investigation is underway after police found the body of a teenage girl in the Gateway-Green Valley Ranch neighborhood. The girl has been identified by her family.

According to the Denver Police Department, officers were conducting an outdoor death investigation in the 4900 block of North Salida Street. The area is southeast of Parkfield Lake Park in the Gateway-Green Valley Ranch neighborhood.

Almost an hour later, police provided an update that the death was now being investigated as a homicide. The girl’s family and police later identified the victim as 16-year-old Tayanna Manuel.

Police said a 2012 gray Honda CR-V with Colorado license Plate CNE-I47 on the back and a pink and black Auto Nation dealer plate on the front, is believed to be involved in Manuel’s murder.

FOX31’s Rob Low was at the scene and said Manuel’s body was found near a dumpster around a Green Valley Ranch apartment complex. No one has been arrested at this time.

Low said the Dock Ellis Foundation, which investigates missing Black girls, said Manuel’s death is possibly connected to a shooting that occurred on Saturday in the 4600 block of Kittredge Street.

Police haven’t updated that case but the foundation told the Problem Solvers Manuel may have been in the car when a male was shot and taken to a hospital, and for reasons not yet clear that shooting may have made her a target.

One detective told FOX31 he didn’t think the girl lived at the apartment complex where her body was found, which raised the question of whether she was killed there or somewhere else.

The Denver Office of the Medical Examiner will provide the victim’s identity and cause of death at a later date.

Anyone with information on this homicide is asked to call the Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867.

This is a developing story, more information will be added as it becomes available.