Hundreds Of Children Missing In DC Warrants Investigation: Black Caucus

WASHINGTON, DC — Black members of Congress are requesting Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director James Comey look into hundreds of cases of missing children, many of them black or Latino, in the first three months of the year, according to a report.

The Associated Press reports that a letter, which was sent by Congressional Black Caucus chairman Cedric Richmond, a Democrat from Louisiana, and D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, asks Sessions and Comey to "devote the resources necessary to determine whether these developments are an anomaly or whether they are indicative of an underlying trend that must be addressed."

D.C. has logged 501 cases of missing juveniles so far in 2017, although many of them were later found unharmed, and only 22 cases are yet to be solved. D.C. police reportedly said there hasn't been an increase in missing persons, they have simply been posted on social media more often, according to the AP.

In fact, the AP notes that missing child cases in the District dropped from 2,433 in 2015 to 2,242 last year. The highest total recently, 2,610, was reported in 2001.

Concern in the DC area has grown with the increased social media attention in a city that has an African-American population of about 48 percent.

Hundreds of people packed a town-hall style meeting at a school Wednesday to express concern about the missing children cases. "Ten children of color went missing in our nation's capital in a period of two weeks and at first garnered very little media attention. That's deeply disturbing," Richmond's letter said, according to Fox News.

Derrica Wilson, co-founder of the Black and Missing Foundation, told Fox News she worries that human trafficking is a factor, and cited the high-profile case of 8-year-old Relisha Rudd, who has been missing for three years and is feared dead.

Relisha has been missing since March 1, 2014, when she was last seen with Kahlil Tatum, who was the janitor of a homeless shelter where the girl lived with her mother and siblings. Police say Tatum killed his wife, Andrea Denise Tatum, 51, also of N Street, Southeast Washington. Her body was found in a motel room in the 6100 block of Oxon Hill Road on March 20, 2014. She had died from an apparent gunshot wound.

Tatum himself was later found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Northeast D.C., but police have never found Relisha. In April 2016, DC police spent two days searching the grounds of the National Arboretum, including sending divers into a pond on the property, without success.

Image via National Park Service