A 32-year-old man has faced a Melbourne court over the alleged murder of a woman in the city’s Chinatown district.

A schizophrenic man has faced court accused of murdering a woman whose body was found in Melbourne’s Chinatown.

Christopher Allen Bell, 32, is charged with killing 32-year-old Natalina Angok from Geelong, whose body was found early yesterday at the corner of a dead-end laneway.

Bell sat in the dock of Melbourne Magistrates Court on Thursday with a lowered head as his lawyer Steven Pica said the accused had been un-medicated for a long time.

He had been released from a mental inpatient facility “only a week ago”, after staying for a week, the court was told.

Magistrate Cathy Lamble said he was a “diagnosed schizophrenic” who needed to take the antipsychotic drug Seroquel.

“His mental health needs should be assessed as soon as possible,” she said.

He will be kept in custody to appear in the same court on Friday for a filing hearing.

Police are yet to release the results of an overnight autopsy which they’d hoped would confirm Ms Angok’s cause of death.

She was found at the intersection of Little Bourke Street and Celestial Avenue just after 6.30am on Wednesday.

Detectives quickly declared her death suspicious after a passerby found her lifeless.

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– AAP