A girl’s harrowing break out from a Missouri basement the place she used to be sexually assaulted and held captive for weeks made nationwide headlines previous this month.
On Friday, the nonprofit newspaper The Kansas Town Defender reported some other aggravating issue within the case. Across the time of the girl’s disappearance from a Kansas Town community, group participants had reportedly expressed concern a couple of conceivable serial killer, mentioning the disappearance of a couple of Black girls and women. However Kansas Town Police pushed aside their issues.
Invoice Lukitsch/The Kansas Town Celebrity by the use of AP
The 22-year-old Black lady instructed police that Timothy M. Haslett Jr. had kidnapped her and imprisoned her in a basement room in Excelsior Springs ― a town simply northeast of Kansas Town. There, he whipped and raped her time and again, she mentioned. On Oct. 7, after a couple of month within the basement, she fled and sought lend a hand from neighbors whilst the person used to be taking his kid to university. When she escaped, she used to be nonetheless dressed in a steel collar locked with a padlock that government had to take away.
The lady additionally mentioned she had buddies who “didn’t make it” and claimed that the person had killed them, Ciara Tharp, one of the most neighbors who helped her, instructed native information station KCTV 5. The Excelsior Springs Police Division showed to The Day by day Mail that it used to be “actively investigating” the potential for “two extra girls sufferers.”
Within the period in-between, Haslett, who’s white, has been arrested within the case. The 39-year-old pleaded no longer accountable ultimate week to fees together with rape, kidnapping and attack.
Sooner than the girl’s break out, claims about murdered and lacking Black girls in Kansas Town had long gone viral on social media. The Kansas Town Defender additionally printed a video by which group chief Bishop Tony Caldwell spoke about the problem, mentioning a particular stretch of Prospect Street the place girls had long gone lacking. That very same location is the place the escaped lady would later say she were kidnapped.
On the time, Kansas Town Police known as the claims “totally unfounded,” announcing in a commentary that “there’s no foundation to toughen this rumor.”
On Saturday, police spokesperson Officer Donna Drake instructed HuffPost that the dept made its prior commentary as it had no longer gained any formal lacking individual experiences.
“We base our investigations on experiences made to our division,” she mentioned in an e mail. “There were no experiences made to our division of lacking individuals, extra particularly girls, lacking from Prospect Street in Kansas Town, Missouri. So as to start a lacking individual’s investigation, any individual would wish to report a record with our division figuring out the lacking birthday celebration.”