Robin Gentry / EyeEm
It’s been nearly over a month and police officials in East Orange, New Jersey are still desperately searching for 14-year-old Jashyah Moore.
Moore was last seen on Oct. 14 shopping at a deli in her neighborhood in East Orange. A search task force was deployed by The Essex County Prosecutor’s Office over the weekend to find the young teen. According to CNN, rescue personnel used sonar technology to search a park nearby for traces of Moore, but the search was to no avail. The task force includes the East Orange Police, Essex County Sheriff’s Office, the FBI, and the Orange Police Department among others.
Officials are now offering a $20,000 cash reward to anyone who has information on Moore’s whereabouts.
The young teen’s mother, Jamie Moore, said that she strongly believes Jashyah “did not run away.”
“She was abducted. I don’t know who did it, but we’re looking for you,” Jamie told reporters during a press conference on Nov 9. Jamie pled with viewers to help provide as much information as possible to bring Jayshyah home.
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“We want her family to know, our community to know, and the world to know quite frankly that we are working to bring Jashyah home safely. She is our number one concern,” said East Orange Police Chief Phyllis Bindi added.
As of now, Bindi said the investigators
don’t suspect any foul play at this point in the case, but the task force hopes that the surveillance video will help them to recover her. Investigators said there did not appear to be anyone with Jashyah in the moments leading up to her disappearance.
According to the
National Crime Information Center, in 2020 there were “268,884 girls and women who were reported missing,” out of that large number
nearly 90,333, or 34 percent of them, were Black. It’s important to note that Black women and girls only make up 15 percent of the population while white women and girls make up 59 percent of missing cases–accounting for 75 percent of the population.
The numbers further highlight the disproportionate media attention that is often given to missing white women cases or
“missing white woman syndrome.” The chilling reality was recently made apparent in the case of 22-year-old Gabby Petito.
On Sept.11, Petito went missing while on a cross-country trip with her boyfriend. However due to the onslaught of media attention and the FBI’s persistence, her remains were quickly discovered in Wyoming’s Bridger-Teton National Forest on Sept. 21, —just days after police reported her missing. This has not been the case for many victims of color including the death of Jelani Day and the disappearances of both Paige Coffey and Rajah McQueen in recent months. These cases still remain unsolved and Jashyah’s could be another if the FBI does not ramp up its efforts and bring more media attention to her disappearance.
