An army of cops and police dogs tore through every inch of a lower Manhattan office tower in a bid to find a mother of three who vanished from the tightly guarded building.
Eridania Rodriguez, 46, is believed to be the victim of foul play. She was not captured leaving the 26-story high-rise by any of its cameras when she went missing, a few hours before the end of her cleaning shift Tuesday night.
Canine units and Emergency Service Unit officers combed over the 400,000-square-foot building on Rector Street, looking for signs of life from the pretty mom as her family stood vigil outside.
As each office and hallway was ruled out, officers marked them as dead ends with a green ‘x.’
Teams of detectives are being dispatched today to a Pennsylvania landfill, where the building’s refuse is carted, sources said.
“I’m scared [someone] raped her and left her somewhere,” Rodriguez’s frightened 17-year-old daughter, Yaniris Figueroa, told The Post. “I think she’s alive and suffering. I just want them to find her and bring her back.”
Detectives grilled two men today in the bizarre disappearance of the Inwood resident, who emigrated here from the Dominican Republic 27 years ago.
One was a freight-elevator operator with multiple prior arrests, including a crazed attack on his girlfriend’s car with a bowling ball. He was held for a day but released after demanding a lawyer. “They were interrogating him pretty tough,” said the man’s brother.
Investigators also quizzed a city Department of Transportation employee who family members said followed Rodriguez around the building’s empty floors at night and gave her the creeps.
“He would look at her and appear on floors where she was working alone,” said Rodriguez’s brother Victor Martinez. “She said she was scared of working here at night. There are big, empty floors with no security cameras.”
The DOT employee, who is not being immediately eyed as a suspect, left the building about a month ago but would show up from time to time.
A family friend added that Rodriguez complained that a worker had followed her into the bathroom recently and exposed himself. It was unclear whether he was one of those grilled by cops.
Rodriguez landed the job working for Stellar Management about six months ago through her brother Cesar Martinez who also works at the building-RD>. She was spotted on surveillance tape entering the building but not leaving it. She was last seen talking to a co-worker at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.
When she didn’t return home, worried family members called cops. “My mom would not leave that building for no reason,” said Figueroa. “She never goes out except to work.”
Detectives found the woman’s hair clip on the eighth floor but her ID has not been found. Her street clothes were discovered in her locker on the 10th floor. Her cellphone has not been used or even powered on since she went missing. “I never fall asleep before she gets home,” said Figueroa.”I always worried about her because she gets home late. That work wasn’t for her.”
Additional reporting by Amber Sutherland, Austin Fenner and Tom Liddy