Oluwatoyin Salau, a 19-365 days-veteran Dark Lives Matter protestor, was found useless on Saturday in Tallahassee, Fla. after being reported missing a week earlier according to police.
Salau’s physique was found alongside with the physique of Victoria Sims, a 75-365 days-veteran woman and longtime AARP volunteer, who had also been reported missing days prior, a police verbalize says. The Tallahassee Police Department is investigating both deaths as homicides and a suspect, Aaron Glee Jr., 49, has been taken into custody.
Tallahassee police possess no longer equipped additional dinky print on Glee’s arrest, or identified a connection between him and either of the 2 females. Leon County court docket files say that Glee was fair fair nowadays arrested on Would possibly possibly well fair 30 on a payment of aggravated battery inflicting bodily nervousness or disability and on June 9 on a payment of battery touch or strike.
Outrage over Salau’s disappearance has mounted in latest days; her title has trended widely online amid requires additional consideration to her case and the easier pattern of violence against Dark females.
Be taught extra: Why Are Dark Females and Girls Restful an Afterthought in Our Outrage Over Police Violence?
In the wake of potentially the latest police killings of George Floyd, Sean Reed, Tony McDade and Breonna Taylor among others, Salau had been an energetic participant and speaker at some level of Dark Lives Matter protests in Tallahassee.
She went missing on June 6 after tweeting about being sexually assaulted by a individual she said had equipped her a lope and assist to gain her assets from a church the effect had been staying.
In a thread of tweets detailing the assault, Salau wrote that she known as the police after she was attacked. While Salau did no longer title who assaulted her within the tweets, she described him as a Dark male in his mid-40s, and also equipped dinky print on the produce of his automobile. She did no longer reply to or write any fresh tweets after June 6.
Police did no longer true now reply to a quiz for touch upon Salau’s allegations and whether an investigation was opened to glance into them.
Danaya Hemphill, 22, described Salau—identified among friends as “Toyin”— as “very passionate, very vocal, very loving, very non secular, very caring” in an interview with the Tallahassee Democrat. “Toyin, she was tackle a mild-weight in a darkish room,” Hemphill said. “That was Toyin.”
Hemphill said in tweets on Monday that Salau had fair fair nowadays graduated excessive college and had stayed with her earlier than her disappearance.
In the closing weeks of her existence, Salau dedicated herself to the Dark Lives Matter whisk. Hemphill shared that Salau would recite the names of Dark victims of police violence at some level of the ongoing protests against police brutality, together with invoking McDade — a Dark transgender man who was killed by a Tallahassee police officer in Would possibly possibly well fair — and Floyd’s names, at a latest disclose in entrance of the Tallahassee Police Department, according to the Democrat.
“I don’t desire their names gone in useless,” Salau had said on the time.
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Write to Mahita Gajanan at mahita.gajanan@time.com.