YOKOHAMA – Police on Saturday sent to prosecutors for possible indictment an American man arrested in connection with the death of a woman whose body was found last month in a cove in Miura, Kanagawa Prefecture.

Gregory Joseph Gumo, a 41-year-old resident of Yokohama, was arrested Thursday on suspicion of dumping the body of 42-year-old contract worker and Tokyo resident Mariko Akitaya.

The police believe the suspect and the victim were acquainted and that there was some kind of trouble between them, investigative sources said. A security camera captured an image of the two together in a car shortly before the body is believed to have been dumped around July 28, the sources said.

The suspect has denied responsibility, police said.

A local resident found the body floating in the cove around 20 to 30 meters off the shore of Koajiro Bay on the morning of July 29. The body of the woman, who was wearing a dress, was wrapped in a sheet and bound with a rope to which a concrete block was attached.

Police suspect Akitaya was still alive when thrown into the sea as an autopsy found water in her lungs, and are treating the incident as a murder.

Gumo was stopped at Tokyo’s Haneda airport on the evening of July 29 and later arrested as he was apparently attempting to flee to the United States.