Cops: Body positively ID'd as Iris Tyson

Police yesterday confirmed that the body found in an overgrown, grassy Point Breeze lot Sunday morning was that of Iris Tyson, who was reported missing from her South Philly home on Mother's Day. Her death was ruled a homicide caused by blunt-force trauma to the head.

But many questions remained.

"We don't know if the homicide occurred [in the grassy lot] or if she was dumped there," said Lt. Ray Evers, a police spokesman.

Homicide detectives are investigating the whereabouts of the pretty, petite 23-year-old from the time she went missing May 8 and are trying to find out who killed her.

Still in shock from his daughter's death, Joe Tyson said yesterday: "My daughter's gone. Ain't nothing going to bring her back here . . . my pride and joy."

On Monday, in an interview at his home in the Whitman section of South Philadelphia, Tyson had said that his daughter didn't hang around Point Breeze.

She was a responsible child who lived with her parents and was looking to go back to school to become a veterinarian, he said.

Police were alerted to Tyson's body, found near abandoned homes between Sydenham and Hicks streets, just north of Federal, by someone who then called 9-1-1.

Joe Tyson and his wife, Kelly, said that they last saw their only child about 1 p.m. Mother's Day. She walked out of their house to buy a card to surprise her mom, and said she would be back in "a little bit," her father said. When she didn't return, her mother filed a missing-person report, and family and friends posted fliers looking for her.