Bookcase 'trap' killed US woman

The body of a missing US woman has been found by her family, wedged upside down behind a bookcase in her room.

Mariesa Weber, 38, is believed to have fallen over and become trapped as she tried to reach behind the bookcase to adjust the plug for a TV set.

Her family spent nearly two weeks searching for her, fearing she had been kidnapped from the house she shared with them in Florida.

Ms Weber may have died of suffocation, a local police spokesman said.

Her death was not being treated as suspicious, the spokesman said.

Ms Weber's parents last saw her alive in the family house on 28 October.

Unable to locate her after that, the family contacted the police, fearing she had been abducted.

Her body was eventually discovered when her sister noticed a foot protruding behind the bookcase in her bedroom.

"I'm sleeping in the same house as her for 11 days, looking for her. And she's right in the bedroom," the woman's mother, Connie Weber, told the St Petersburg Times newspaper.

The family told the newspaper they had noticed a strange smell from her room but had blamed it on rats.

They told the paper their daughter's light weight and petite frame may have contributed to her death.

"She's a little thing," her mother reportedly said. "And the bookcase is 6ft tall and solid. And she couldn't get out."