A female Northeastern student was shot and killed in her Mission Hill apartment early yesterday morning, according to police and local media reports.

Rebecca Payne, 22, of New Milford, Conn., was found dead in a Parker Hill Avenue apartment yesterday, according to the Boston Globe, who confirmed her identity through her father. Police did not identify the victim, but said she is believed to be Hispanic and about 22 years old.

While several students live in the apartment complex, The News could not confirm that Payne was a resident.

Requests for comment left at the Payne family household in Connecticut yesterday afternoon were unreturned.

The building manager for the Parker Hill Apartments complex, Felix Luna, found the victim inside the apartment, said Rosa Gonzales, his mother-in-law who lives on the third floor of the building.

Police arrived shortly before 7 a.m. and found the victim who appeared to have suffered from gunshot wounds. She was pronounced dead at the scene, according to police reports.

According to local media reports, the building manager found Payne after the door to her apartment was left open. She was shot twice in the legs and once in the chest, according to the reports. Boston Police did not have further information as of press time.

Luna declined to comment to The News yesterday afternoon.

Several apartment residents said they heard gun shots late Monday night but did not call police. One resident, who has lived in the complex for about 10 years, told The News, “I heard four to five gun shots. I didn’t pay to mind to it because I hear gun shots a lot, so it was like whatever.”

Nobody called police, according to the Globe, who cited anonymous police officers. Elaine Driscoll, a spokesperson for Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis told the Globe it was unclear whether Payne would have survived had police been notified immediately.

Police and homicide detectives were working on the scene yesterday, and officers could be seen through a second-floor window. The crime scene initially included the apartment complex, an adjacent parking lot, a portion of Parker Hill Avenue and a playground across the street.

Police escorted residents in and out of the building throughout the day, and it was reopened shortly before 7 p.m.

At that time, the crime scene was reduced to the building’s northern stairwell, which is adjacent to two apartment doors on the second floor.

Residents enter the building with a key, according to the Globe. They walk through a contained lobby that is secured with a video camera.

At 1:39 p.m., administrators sent a university-wide five-line e-mail notifying the Northeastern community of the incident.

“Northeastern’s Office of Public Safety has been informed of an investigation into the death of a young woman on Mission Hill this morning. … It appears that a number of Northeastern students live in the building where the death took place,” the e-mail said.

A Northeastern spokesperson would not confirm late last night whether the victim was enrolled as a student at the university, saying: “The Boston Police Department has not confirmed the identity of the victim in the Mission Hill shooting and doesn’t expect to do so until sometime during the day Wednesday. Until then, we believe any speculation is inappropriate.”

Several friends of Payne who spoke to The News said Payne fit the description of the victim and that she could not be reached.

According to her Facebook page and several of her friends, Payne was a junior athletic training major.

Boston Police say homicide detectives are actively investigating the facts and circumstances surrounding this incident. In addition, Boston Police will be increasing patrols to the area.

Despite the apparent brutality of the incident, Boston City Councilor Michael Ross, who lives in close proximity to the Parker Hill Apartment complex, said in local media reports that Mission Hill is a safe place to live.

The last time a Northeastern student was shot to death in their home was in 2003, when three men entered an apartment on Hemenway Street and shot then-middler James Cassidy, according to reports by The News at the time. It later appeared to be drug-related.