Remove dom element without knowing its parent?

You should be able to get the parent of the element, then remove the element from that

function removeElement(el) {
el.parentNode.removeChild(el);
}

Update

You can set this as a new method on the HTMLElement:

HTMLElement.prototype.remove = function() { this.parentNode.removeChild(this); return this; }

And then do el.remove() (which will also return the element)