I usually write a Saturday Seven or a fluff piece on a Saturday...but this news was too important and too distressing (is that a word?) to just ignore or wait to print another time. On February 2, 2011..I wrote a post about the young lady in the photo above. She had gone missing..I wondered aloud if Nancy Grace and Investigative Discovery Television were going to profile her case as they had so many Caucasian women who have gone missing. It doesn't matter now... The mystery is over...Phylicia Barnes has been found! Dead!
ABC News reported early yesterday that the body of missing honors student, Phylicia Barnes has been found in the Susquehanna River. Her body was recovered along with that of an unidentified male yesterday.
Preliminary autopsies failed to determine what caused the deaths of Barnes or the unidentified male, said Terrence Sheridan, superintendent of the Maryland State Police. Sheridan also stated that there was no evidence linking the two deaths other than the proximity of their bodies. "There was no indication of any overt wounds or injuries to Phylicia Barnes' body," Sheridan said.
Phylicia Barnes was 16 when she went missing on Dec. 28 during a trip to visit her half sister. She has been the subject of a multi-jurisdictional missing persons investigation since at least January, officials said. The straight-A student was from Monroe, N.C., and was last heard from Dec. 28, 2010, via Facebook, when she posted a note saying that she was at her half sister's apartment with her half sister's boyfriend. She would have turned 17 on January 12th. This is a very sad ending to a tragic story.
Baltimore police called this one of the strangest and most vexing missing persons cases they've ever investigated, and despite getting help from the FBI, they had few leads.
As I wrote in February,The Police alerted local media soon after Phylicia Barnes' mysterious disappearance, sounding the alarm that her disappearance was unusual because she had no history of disputes with her family or trouble with the law. Investigators believe she may have been kidnapped and possibly taken out of state, and with no suspects or physical evidence, they feared the worst. More than 100 police officers combed a northwest Baltimore park a week after her disappearance, but found no signs of a body or clues to her whereabouts.
Now that is all a footnote.. Her body has been found and the worst has come to pass..She's been found dead. Just what happened to young Phylicia Barnes? It's not for me to speculate....That will be determined by an autopsy and a police investigation. Who is the other man found in the river with her? Again...an autopsy and a police investigation will determine that...I just feel bad...bad because a young person has lost their life..
She was 16 or 17 years old....She should have been preparing for her senior prom....getting her drivers licensce, thinking about graduation and whether or not she would be going to college....Not floating in the river with an unidentified male body....She just deserved better than that!
8 comments:
So Sorry to hear this !
Such a tragedy!
Good Post Keith, Good reporting!
I read this yesterday....Such a loss.
I had a feeling she was already deceased when you originally wrote about her in February!
Seems like you and the Field Negro are the only ones who covered this.
I'm glad you did because I'm not hearing too much about this in the national media.
A part of my heart broke hearing the news. Though i know it in some ways gives some peace to family...it's still a heartbraking situation.
A sad end to a very strangely underreported story. In fact, other than your original post about Phylicia, I scarcerly recall any stories about her case.
Though I will keep my own consuel as to why this was not a bigger story, my thoughts are with her family and their loss.
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