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| D.C. police: Missing 8-year-old girl may be dead | D.C. police: Missing 8-year-old girl may be dead |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said Thursday that the search for a missing 8-year-old girl has turned into a “recovery mission,” meaning authorities do not believe Relisha Rudd will be found alive. | |
| The chief said at an afternoon news conference that Relisha was last seen with the man police say abducted her on March 1. The following day, she said, Kahlil Malik Tatum bought a box of black 42-gallon contractor trash bags and was seen spending time in the Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens near the Maryland line. | |
| “We have not given up on hope that we may find Relisha alive,” Lanier said as officers and federal agents with cadaver dogs continued to comb through woods along the Anacostia River during a day long search. “But we cannot ignore the possibility that he may have killed her.” | |
| In describing the chronology of events, Lanier upended a timeline District officials had provided on Wednesday, saying Relisha was last seen March 1, not on March 7 as had been reported. | |
| Also on Thursday, people familiar with the case said a grand jury has been empaneled to investigate possible obstruction of justice charges against Relisha’s mother, 27-year-old Shamika Young, who allowed Tatum to care for Relisha starting Feb. 26 and has repeatedly assured people that her daughter is “in a safe place. “ | |
| Two police officials said that Young did not want to file a missing persons report when police got involved. She told detectives and the media that she had talked to Relisha by telephone as late as March 17, and she told police her daughter had accompanied Tatum, who she described as her daughter’s doctor, to a medical conference in Atlanta. | |
| Tiffany Young, one of Relisha’s aunts, said she is growing less hopeful that her niece will be found alive. “My body just gets these cold chills like a cold wind passing through,” she said as she watched news of the search for her niece. Though she couldn’t bring herself to say “dead” or “death” aloud, “I am starting to take it as if it is that.” | |
| Police said that after March 2, Tatum continued to go to work at his janitorial job at the homeless shelter at the old D.C. General Hospital, where Relisha lives with her mother and three younger brothers. Police said he quickly left on March 19 as a child welfare and school social worker came to press him about the child’s more than 30 days of absences from Payne Elementary School. Officials said the school had excused many of Relisha’s missed days due to a note from “Dr. Tatum.” The workers learned on March 19 that Tatum was not a doctor. | |
| Police said Tatum fatally shot his wife in the head later that night or early the next morning in a motel room in Oxon Hill, and has not been seen since. Lanier said Relisha was not with him at the motel. Tatum remains on the run with a $25,000 reward on his head and alerts issued from Pennsylvania to Florida, concentrating on Richmond and the Atlanta area. | |
| The new timeline offered by Lanier complicates the District’s earlier explanation of how Relisha could miss six weeks of school without anyone calling child welfare workers. It means Relisha could have been killed long before school and social workers tried to intervene on her behalf, and days before a problem was first recognized. | |
| Earlier t his week, District officials said many of Relisha’s absences were excused by a note from a “Dr. Tatum” provided by Relisha’s relatives. Beatriz “BB” Otero, the deputy mayor for Health and Human Services, told reporters at a news conference that Relisha had been seen in school on March 5, described as her last full day. Other officials had said a teacher saw Relisha at the school on March 7, and that the girl said she was ill and was staying with her grandmother. | |
| But police could not confirm the March 5 and March 7 sightings after interviewing school employees, according to a person familiar with the investigation. Authorities double-checked and learned that on March 5, Relisha had been marked absent in her teacher’s log, but was marked tardy by a front desk clerk. Relisha’s brothers had come late to school that day, but in interviews with police, the clerk could not be certain that Relisha was with them that day. Later that day, Relisha’s mother met with school officials about the girl’s mounting absences. | |
| And the teacher who initially remembered talking to Relisha on Friday, March 7, said the conversation could have actually occurred the previous Friday, Feb. 28. “There is an ongoing investigation about when she was where on what days, and as that investigation goes forward the days may shift,” said Gray administration spokesman Pedro Ribeiro. “This is something continually in flux.” | |
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