On October 2, 2021, 29-year-old Christina Nance was reported missing. On October 7, her body was found – dead in the back of a Huntsville, Alabama police van. Then surveillance footage came out.
Nance’s family, who described police being “very disrespectful” to them during the investigation, were told that there was a clearer video than the grainy footage they were shown of a figure locking themselves inside the van. But police didn’t provide it, adding to their concerns that it wasn’t even Nance in the video.
"We do not believe that our sister would just randomly walk to a van and climb in it,” Nance’s sister said. “First of all, why wasn’t the van locked on police property?” Nance’s cousin also wondered how no one could smell her body, after five days with the van’s windows open.
And Nance’s family isn’t the only one forced to ask similar questions.
34% of women and girls’ missing person cases in 2020 were of Black people. That’s nearly 100,000 people! How many did we hear about? How many families found out the truth?
We can’t expect police to solve cases or facilitate justice when they aren’t even capable of being honest about what happens on their watch. Christina Nance’s family, and all Black people involved in missing person cases, deserve better. But police can’t do that for us.