US police confirmed Monday that autopsy showed the body found in a car in Iowa City on Friday is that of a missing female Chinese student at the Iowa State University (ISU).

Iowa City Police Department said in a news release that the body was identified as 20-year-old Tong Shao, a ISU junior chemical engineering student from China, who had been reported missing since Sept. 19.

Her body was found Friday evening inside the trunk of a 1997 beige Toyota Camry on a parking lot near an apartment building in the Dolphin Lake Pointe area of Iowa City. Shao bought the car after she completed an internship in Kentucky this summer.

Shao was last seen on Sept. 6, and was last heard from on Sept. 8, when she texted her friend that she was in Iowa City to see a friend and was planning to visit friends in Minnesota.

Iowa City police said they were treating the case as "suspicious," without revealing the cause and manner of Shao's death. Xiangnan Li, 23, a Chinese student at the University of Iowa, has been listed as "a person of interest" in the case for "possibly having information regarding the circumstances surrounding the death of Ms. Shao."

The police added that they believed that Li, identified as Shao's boyfriend, had returned to China, though they are "still awaiting official confirmation."