A Chinese woman was found dead Tuesday morning in her apartment in Kita Ward, Tokyo, after being bound with adhesive tape in an apparent robbery, police said.

Police identified the woman as Sang Genmei, 45. She was found by her roommate in the bathroom of the apartment around 10 a.m. with tape wrapped around her face, arms and feet.

The roommate, also 45, reportedly told police that three unknown men broke into their apartment around 11.45 p.m. Monday while she was sleeping. She was bound with tape, threatened with a sharp object and told in Chinese to keep quiet. The men proceeded to rummage through the apartment, she said.

According to investigators, Sang, who had told acquaintances that she was an employee at a beauty salon, apparently died of suffocation because of the tape covering her face. There were also indications that she had been hit over the head, they added.

Some 70,000 yen in cash as well as the dead woman's bank card were missing from the apartment, they said.

Sang, who had returned to the apartment a few hours after her roommate, was also bound and then taken into the bathroom, police quoted the roommate as saying. The men left at around 7 a.m. Tuesday, according to the woman.

The woman told police she freed herself from the tape and found her roommate dead.

A man in the same neighborhood told Kyodo News he heard noises and loud voices, which sounded like men and women fighting, coming from the apartment between midnight and 1 a.m.

The apartment is in a residential area about 200 meters southeast of JR Higashi-Jujo Station.