The death of a 16-year-old girl from the Bronx whose body was misidentified as that of an adult's, has been ruled as a homicide.

According to Newsday, the medical examiner's office has determined the death of Tiana Rice as having resulted from an asthma attack brought on while she was being raped.

The body of the African-American teen, found on Dec. 30 in a Brooklyn building, was incorrectly identified as that of a young adult woman's whose license was found by police near the crime scene.

The family of Rice has expressed anger with the police over the weeks they spent searching for her. "It could've been handled differently," grandmother Bernadine Caines has told NY Daily News.

Rice's body lay unclaimed for a month in a morgue until her family was told in early February that the teen was their daughter.

Investigators think the teen had engaged in consensual sex with two men, one of whom she met online. She is believed to have died while being raped by a third man. No arrests have been made by police.