A girl’s harrowing escape from a Missouri basement the place she was sexually assaulted and held captive for weeks made nationwide headlines earlier this month.
On Friday, the nonprofit newspaper The Kansas City Defender reported one other disturbing issue within the case. Across the time of the girl’s disappearance from a Kansas Metropolis neighborhood, neighborhood members had reportedly expressed fear a few potential serial killer, citing the disappearance of a number of Black girls and ladies. However Kansas Metropolis Police dismissed their considerations.
Invoice Lukitsch/The Kansas Metropolis Star by way of AP
The 22-year-old Black girl informed police that Timothy M. Haslett Jr. had kidnapped her and imprisoned her in a basement room in Excelsior Springs ― a metropolis simply northeast of Kansas Metropolis. There, he whipped and raped her repeatedly, she stated. On Oct. 7, after a few month within the basement, she fled and sought assist from neighbors whereas the person was taking his baby to highschool. When she escaped, she was nonetheless sporting a metallic collar locked with a padlock that authorities needed to take away.
The girl additionally stated she had pals who “didn’t make it” and claimed that the person had killed them, Ciara Tharp, one of many neighbors who helped her, told local news station KCTV 5. The Excelsior Springs Police Division confirmed to The Daily Mail that it was “actively investigating” the potential for “two extra girls victims.”
Within the meantime, Haslett, who’s white, has been arrested within the case. The 39-year-old pleaded not responsible final week to prices together with rape, kidnapping and assault.
Earlier than the girl’s escape, claims about murdered and lacking Black girls in Kansas Metropolis had gone viral on social media. The Kansas Metropolis Defender additionally published a video during which neighborhood chief Bishop Tony Caldwell spoke concerning the subject, citing a selected stretch of Prospect Avenue the place girls had gone lacking. That very same location is the place the escaped girl would later say she had been kidnapped.
On the time, Kansas Metropolis Police referred to as the claims “utterly unfounded,” saying in a statement that “there isn’t any foundation to assist this rumor.”
On Saturday, police spokesperson Officer Donna Drake informed HuffPost that the division made its prior assertion as a result of it had not obtained any formal lacking individual studies.
“We base our investigations on studies made to our division,” she stated in an electronic mail. “There have been no studies made to our division of lacking individuals, extra particularly girls, lacking from Prospect Avenue in Kansas Metropolis, Missouri. As a way to start a lacking individual’s investigation, somebody would wish to file a report with our division figuring out the lacking social gathering.”