What happened to Taylor Blackwell? The question blared from handmade posters and from emphatic speakers at a press conference Wednesday evening as community activists joined family and friends in calling for answers for a young Black woman who was found dead at a local hotel on February 28.
The gathering took place outside the Woodspring Suites on La Mancha Way, where the 19-year-old spent her last moments. Four months later, speakers say there are still many unanswered questions.
Ms. Blackwell’s mother, Chiffon Buckner, addressed the crowd assembled outside the Woodspring Suites. She said other than a July 2 phone call from the Sacramento Police Department, she hasn’t heard much about the investigation into her daughter’s death. That call, she says, only came after a video she posted online, to bring awareness to what was happening, went viral and after the singer Trey Songz commented on it on social media.
“All I want is the truth,” Ms. Buckner said.
Community leaders seek the same.
“We’re all here, every one of us, whether we knew Taylor Blackwell or whether we knew of her, because she’s a part of our village, she’s a part of our community,” said Les Simmons, pastor of South Sacramento Christian Center, as he led a prayer and moment of silence.
Berry Accius said he was speaking, not as a community activist or mentor with such organizations as Voice of the Youth or She Could Be My Daughter, but as a father, one with two daughters of his own.
“I think of when my daughter was 19 years old, so full of life, so ready to conquer the world, so impatient, so imbalanced, so imperfect, but I clearly remember my daughter being someone who would be a game-changer, someone I would say ‘I can’t wait until you’re 25. I can’t wait to see you graduate from college. I can’t wait to possibly see you get married,’ but for Taylor Blackwell’s mother, family, friends, those moments that I will soon experience, or have experienced, she can’t have that opportunity; they can’t have that opportunity and I ask why?” Accius said.
“What happened on February 28 and why as a community did we not know about it?” he continued.
Accius pointed out a lack of transparency and accountability for local law enforcement. Racism is real too, he says.
“I don’t care about a COVID-19. I don’t care about a George Floyd protest, there should be no way for from February 28 to right now, July 8, that we don’t have hardcore answers on what happened to Taylor Blackwell. If the zip codes were changed and if Taylor Blackwell was Karen Blackwell, a 19-year-old White girl going to McClatchy High School this would have made CNN, Time magazine … but because unfortunately, as beautiful as her melanated skin is, as a Black woman here in Sacramento, the place of diversity and multiculturalism, where everyone is equal, she gets no justice and her family and friends get no peace and we still don’t know what happened to this Black girl.”
Activists are speaking out and demanding answers amid local and national calls to defund police departments and for reform related to how departments police in communities of color.
In the four months since Ms. Blackwell was found dead, George Floyd died in Minneapolis, Minnesota as a White officer held him down to the ground with a knee to his neck and the officers involved weren’t arrested until after an outcry from the community; several African American males have be found hanging from trees and were initially ruled suicides until the Black community demanded that they actually be investigated; and a Black woman, Breonna Taylor, was shot and killed in Louisville, Kentucky, when police entered her home on a “no knock” warrant that have since come under fire, due to community outrage.
Local activist and epidemiologist Dr. Flojuane Cofer says it’s time for a different way forward.
“I want our imaginations to remain big enough that, even though this keeps happening time and time again, we still envision a future where it never has to happen again,” Dr. Cofer said.
To the family that attended the gathering, she said, “I don’t even know where we begin to help you heal, but we’re here to try.”
Added Ms. Buckner: “All I want to know is what happened to my baby girl. I want the same justice that anyone who is in my position would want … I want the detectives to care about what happened to my daughter and to the detectives who are on her case, if you don’t care, give the case to somebody else who does.”
Accius says the family deserves answers, as does the wider community.
“I am enraged. I am furious and as a father, I am in fear. If Taylor Blackwell was murdered, if her death was not an accident, her killer still walks among us, free, not checked, feeling he got away and ready to do it to the next victim.”
By Genoa Barrow | OBSERVER Senior Staff Writer