Or, you know, turn it off? There must have been an emergency kill switch on that thing

I did a brief stint working in a bakery. If it’s anything like those oven there’s only a small glass window to see inside. Though I don’t recall them locking, I imagine they would otherwise employees would get blasted with hundred degree heat. They also seem like prying them open would be incredibly difficult. I don’t know how they aren’t like walk ins with an emergency release. I agree still something doesn’t add up.

I'm pretty sure walk-in ovens, like walk-in freezers, are supposed to have a few safety features like interior handles that open regardless of any outside lock, alarms, etc.
This is certainly suspicious af.

The management might have preferred the store closure to having the bakery department marked off with crime scene tape in full view of any customers. And the cops probably appreciated not having a bunch of lookie-loos staring at them across the tape. Plus I imagine that the dead woman's mother isn't the only employee dealing with shock/mental health issues because of this. They may not have been able to get enough staff willing to come in to reopen the store immediately.

(TL;DR: There may well be something ugly going on here, but I don't think the store being closed is enough evidence to prove that on its own.)

Regardless of foul play, this is awful and deserves a thorough investigation.

Either the security protections weren’t good enough, protocols weren’t followed, or something else happened that needs to be understood (accidental or otherwise).

And taking bolt cutters to a lockout lock without a thorough investigation of where the owner of said lock is should be treated as either attempted murder or murder, depending on the outcome.

Edit: not necessarily applicable to this particular story, but hearing about it being done in some cases pisses me off.

Knowing the how and why of workers' deaths only makes you a bad person if you want it to happen again.

Why would that make you a bad person?

Likely asphyxiation, and not the pleasant, "drift off on a carbon monoxide high" kind of asphyxiation. The "oh God, my lungs are melting and I can't breathe" kind of asphyxiation. The only hope is that it got hot fast enough that her brain melted before her lungs, so she didn't have time to understand the pain. All in all, it's not a good way to go.

Curiousity doesn't make you a bad person, it makes you a person.

well I mean yeah, as stated in the article that's what the investigators are trying to determine. it's pretty much the first step in any investigation like this. just because her body was found in the oven doesn't automatically mean she was baked alive