A 14-year-old Black girl in Kansas City is missing. Why didn’t KCPD alert the public? | Opinion
Lashawnda Simonton Summers stood in the parking lot of a Wild Woody’s Happy Foods market in Kansas City and faced the sun. She wore sunglasses, but nothing could help hide the anguish on this mother’s face on an otherwise sunny but brisk day.
When we spoke Wednesday, Summers’ 14-year-old daughter Jaliayhia Simonton was missing and no one close to the family had heard from the child since Sunday. The last time Summers saw her daughter, a freshman at Northeast High School, was earlier that day as the family prepared for church service, she said.
The angst of not knowing where Jaliayhia weighed heavy on Summers, she said. She pleaded for her daughter’s safe return.
“Just bring her back home,” Summers said.
Summers said her attention span these days isn’t worth much. And who could blame this poor mother’s mind for wandering aimlessly? Four days had passed since she last laid eyes on her child or heard Jaliayhia’s voice — an eternity for any parent.
“Forgive me, my head is all over the place,” she said.
A flyer the family was circulating this week states Jaliayhia was last seen Feb. 23 walking eastbound on 10th and Agnes streets. She wore a black and silver studded bonnet, white hoodie, white tank top, blue and green pajama pants and beige Crocs-style shoes. Jaliayhia’s hair was in a ponytail. Her height is listed on the flyer at 5-feet-1 and she weighs 130 pounds.
No alert media from KCPD
The family filed a missing person report with the Kansas City Police Department about four hours after Jaliayhia left the family’s home near downtown Kansas City. According to Summers, the teen initially left on her own accord. After four days away from home, Summers was rightfully concerned for her child’s safety.
“She should have been able to contact me by now,” Summers said.
But Kansas City police officials said investigators did not believe Jaliayhia was in danger and therefore did not issue a media alert to bring more public attention to this case.
I do not agree with that assessment. The 14-year-old was not with her mother or another trusted adult, and her social media accounts have not been active since Sunday, according to Summers. No matter how much time has gone by, a parent not knowing the whereabouts of their child is pure torture.
How is Jaliayhia not considered endangered?
“Every case is unique and the circumstances surrounding media blasts are done at the request of the case detective based on the needs of that case,” Kansas City Police Public Information Officer Alayna Gonzalez wrote in an email. “In this particular case, preliminary information did not indicate the juvenile was in danger.”
Search party for Jaliayhia Simonton
The high on Thursday was 63 degrees, unseasonably warm for late February, but a slight chill still permeated the air. Summers was at Wild Woody”s market on the city’s East Side to canvas an area Jaliayhia was known to frequent. Members of AdHoc Group Against Crime, an anti-violence community organization, were there to help organize the search.
“It is a parent’s worst nightmare to not know where their child is,” AdHoc Group president Damon Daniel said. “At the very least, we need to know that baby is OK.”
I was present to help lend my voice to a missing person case that has flown under the local media’s radar. It’s no stretch to say that when little Black girls like Jaliayhia go missing, there is seemingly a lack of urgency in highlighting these disappearances, which is disheartening.
While Black women and girls make up 7.8% of the U.S. population, they account for nearly 36% of all missing females in America, according to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center.
Yet the media attention given to missing white women and children is far greater than the publicity received by their minority counterparts, according to an analysis by nonprofit Black and Missing Foundation.
It’s easy to imagine what the outcry would be if a 14-year-old white child from Johnson County or suburban Kansas City went missing for days. Black girls’ lives matter, too.
Nationwide and here locally in Kansas City, that lack of awareness must change.
