ADMITTED HE HID HER BODY

Bx. man also faces drug rap

POLICE HAVE ARRESTED a 57-yearold man they say left a woman’s rotting remains in a shopping cart on a Bronx street, officials said Friday.

Investigators nabbed Darryl Orr after recovering surveillance footage that showed him leaving the cart on Walton Ave. near E. 182nd St. in University Heights. Orr is charged with concealment of a human corpse.

The dead 27-year-old woman, identified by police sources as Nivela Hassan, was stuffed into a cardboard box and placed in a folding shopping cart. The box was covered with a plastic garbage bag, cops said.

Two men found Hassan’s decomposing corpse about 8:45 p.m. Wednesday as they rooted through the cart looking for bottles to recycle.

Cops initially believed the victim was a man. Hassan’s last known address is in Massachusetts but she has been staying on the city streets for the last few years, police sources said.

Orr told police he met Hassan early Tuesday morning and invited her to his apartment.

After a short stay, she fell asleep on Orr’s bed. A few hours later, he realized that she had died, possibly of a drug overdose, sources said.

Orr told investigators that Hassan had snorted heroin before they went into his apartment and the two had smoked marijuana and drank together.

He also confessed to disposing Hassan’s body about three blocks from his home on Walton Ave. near E. 182nd St. next to some recyclables about 10:20 p.m. Tuesday.

After Orr left, a building super saw the cart, realized it didn’t belong to her building and rolled it around the corner next to a tree outside a local bodega.

Hassan’s body was discovered a day later after residents complained of a foul odor. An initial autopsy Thursday was inconclusive. The city Medical Examiner will perform additional testing, including toxicology tests, to determine how she died.

Orr was also hit with drug possession and narcotics sale charges after cops found heroin and marijuana in his apartment, which is about three blocks away from the bodega where the body was found.

Police sources described Orr as a major borough drug trafficker who was the subject of a long-term investigation.

Orr was ordered held after his arraignment in Bronx Criminal Court Friday.