Why haven't we heard of Tamika Huston?
 

I just received an e-mail regarding the search for Tamika Huston who has been missing from Spartanburg, SC for over 2 months. I hope that people will click on the link and see if they recognize her. You never know who comes across your path.

In the meantime, I'm disappointed that I haven't heard one thing about this in the media. I know of the pregnant woman that's still missing, but there are other people that are missed by their family and friends that deserve news coverage, too. I also recognize that if each and every missing person received national coverage, we might not hear all of the national news. But am I wrong for even thinking of pulling the "Race Card"? Honestly, the last case of an A-A receiving decent attention that I recall was the unfortunate disapperance and death of our Greek Sister (DST) Christine Moore (R.I.P.).

Such a pretty woman........I'll be in Orangeburg next weekend and will keep my eyes and ears open. I will keep her family in my prays:(

I saw this on our listserve today also. :(

I will too

Sorhors,

Thanks for sharing that information with us. I've never heard about this case at all and I will keep this family in my prayers as well.

Serioussigma22:cool:

Hell, I LIVE in SC and haven't heard this. :( Thanks for posting this.

How very very sad!!

I live an hour and a half away and have not heard about this. She's been missing since late May? Hell I saw ticker tape for Hacking 15 minutes after she was last seen.

Jojapeach, it is definitely a "RACE" thing.


:( :( :( :( :( :(

I live in Greenville, which is about 30 minutes from Spartanburg. When I saw this thread, I was like..."Who is Tamika Huston?" But then after reading, I remembered. That goes to show you how much coverage this story has gotten. This is a really sad situation and indeed needs more coverage.

I should not be 45 miles away and not recognize her name!!:(

I saw this story on BET News. It is sad, and BET raised the issue of race as well.

Who is Soror Christine Moore?I have never heard of her or her ordeal. Can someone please enlighten me. A link to info about her would be nice as well. I ran a search and got nothing.

It's a difficult search
 

There's a radio show that comes on Sunday mornings on 98.7 KISS FM in New York called "Open Line". The show deals with issues that effect the AA community. Yesterday, Tomika's aunt called to discuss her missing neice. The aunt HERSELF deals with PR and media, and she is still having a difficult time getting her neice's story out to the main stream. The only luck she's had so far was BET and someone from "America's Most Wanted", who is keeping tabs on the story and will most likely make an episode about Tomika. Ironicly, she was able to do this b/c her cousin used to date someone who worked for the TV show.

This is definitely about race. HC the Amber Alert wasn't put into action??

Sadly, the further away we get from the day she was reported missing, the less likely they will find her alive. :( :(

They mentioned Tamika on Tom Joyner this morning. BlackAmericaWeb.com now has information about her. Tom also commented on how she had been missing since May and her pit bull had ate its puppies. :(

*update*
 

Evidence suggests foul play in Huston disappearance
Posted Friday, February 18, 2005 - 11:48 pm


By Patricia Newman
STAFF WRITER
pnewman@greenvillenews.com
Police investigating the case of a missing Spartanburg woman say they are looking at several possible suspects after new evidence suggests foul play may have been involved in the disappearance of the 24-year-old.

Spartanburg public safety Capt. Randy Hardy said Friday that forensic evidence found in January has been linked to Tamika Huston, missing since last June.

Hardy declined to say what type of evidence was found, but said as a result, Huston's case is now considered a result of foul play rather than a standard missing person case.

"We've got several people we are looking at as far as suspects," he said. "There are some areas that we may start to look for Tamika as time goes on. But we will continue to look for Tamika."

Hardy said the new evidence changes the focus of the investigation.

"As we started looking into the disappearance of Tamika, there were several suspicious occurrences that came into play," he said. "Her car was found. She had not gotten in touch with any of her relatives and she left behind a dog she loved dearly. All of these things were suspicious in nature, but nothing suggested foul play."

Rebkah Howard, Tamika's aunt, said "the family still clings to the hope that she may be out there. This new evidence frustrates those hopes. It sort of brings to focus that she may not be with us."

She said the family believes someone knows something about what happened to her niece.

"We hope that their conscience would bring them forward to let police know what they know," she said.

Family members reported Huston missing on June 14, 2004.

Her 1991 black Honda CRX was later found abandoned at an apartment complex.

Hardy said they had determined she was last seen about two to three weeks before she was reported missing.

Thanks for the update!

Serioussigma22:cool:

Why do we care about Natalee, Laci, Jennifer?
 

Is there gender and racial profiling in missing persons coverage?
Why some stories, like Tamika Huston's, are never told.

By Josh Mankiewicz
Correspondent
Dateline NBC
Updated: 7:54 p.m. ET Aug. 5, 2005

Missing American girls are often the lead story: The networks and the cable news channels can't seem to get enough of Laci, of Chandra, of Lori, of Jennifer, of Elizabeth, of Natalee.

Their disappearances have brought heartbreak and anguish to their families. But if all you did was watch the TV news in this country, you might think that these are the only people who are missing — or that their fate in particular is incredibly important. News channels tell the story of their disappearances not once, but again and again.

But in a country of almost 300 million, many other Americans are missing too.

Tamika Huston, bright and beautiful with an angel's voice, is one of the other missing Americans.

Tamika Huston's untold story
Aunt Rebkah Howard calls Huston "an amazing young woman."

"She's very bubbly, very bright," says Howard. "She has an amazing singing voice."

Huston's dream of becoming a singer led her to try out for the TV show "American Idol." She didn't make the cut, but the experience seemed to inspire her to set her sights beyond the life she was living in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

"I think she really realized, 'It's time for me to like figure out what I really want to do with the rest of my life,'" says her aunt.

And then, one day in late May of 2004, Huston vanishes. At 24, Tamika had quit her waitressing job and was going out on interviews. Since she was living alone, it took a couple of weeks for her family to notice they hadn't heard from her in awhile.

"I spent Saturday and Sunday trying to find her," says Howard. By Monday morning, Howard called police in Spartanburg and told them something was terribly wrong.

Police went to Tamika's home. She wasn't there and there was no sign of a struggle. And yet, what police did find was reason for her family to worry even more: Huston's abandoned dog.

"Her dog, Macy, who Tamika treated like her child, was there and had given birth to a litter of puppies," says Howard. "It had obviously been left alone for some time in distress. So, at that point, I knew, without question, that something had gone horribly wrong," says Howard.

And the police's report got worse. Inside Tamika's home, police found her driver's license, her cell phone, and some uncashed paychecks. It didn't appear that Huston had just gone on vacation.

Six days later, officers found Tamika's car on the other side of town. Inside the car, they found a set of keys that led them to apartments that seemingly had no connection to the missing woman.

Spartanburg Police Lieutenant Steve Lamb, who led the investigation, says he walked around that apartment complex asking if anybody had seen Huston.

Police were at work and so was Rebkah Howard, a public-relations executive in Miami.

PR blitz in Spartanburg
Howard did what she does best: She drafted press releases and started making phone calls.

In Spartanburg, her public relations skills paid off. The local media picked up on Tamika's story pretty quickly.

But Howard knew she had to spread the word outside Spartanburg. "Tamika could be anywhere from California to New York," she says. "I had no idea, so I wanted to cast as wide a net as I could possibly cast."

Broadcast networks initially don't respond
So Howard starting calling the broadcast networks. But nothing happened.

"I couldn't understand why I wasn't even getting, you know, 'Thank you very much, but we're not interested in this story at this time,'" says Howard.

Howard says no one responded: Not at NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, or MSNBC.

It was crushing news for Howard. Her family had done everything they could think of from prayer vigils and a $30,000 reward to Web sites devoted to news about Huston. And this was a family with some connections — an uncle works for U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, while Howard’s husband is former NFL star Desmond Howard (a Heisman trophy winner and later Superbowl MVP).

But those connections didn't help enough and this family found the disinterest in Tamika's story frustrating. To them, Tamika's story was so similar to those of other women like Chandra Levy and Lori Hacking.

"Lori Hacking went missing about three weeks after my niece did and her family was getting round-the-clock coverage on that case," recalls Howard. "And I had just spent the preceding three weeks trying to get the attention of those same reporters, of those same programs, of those same networks, to pay attention to what I was saying about Tamika. I was flabbergasted."

But Howard wouldn't take no for an answer: Seeing the steady drumbeat of the Laci Peterson coverage, she says she called the "Today" show directly and got nowhere. The same was true at "Good Morning America," at the "Early Show" on CBS, at "20/20" and "Dateline."

"I never got past — I was directed to send an e-mail, which I did," says Howard. But nobody ever messaged her back.

No one is claiming that every missing-persons story should get a place on the news — there are almost 50,000 people in the FBI's database of missing persons cases. But consider this: most of those missing adults are men. Almost 30 percent of those abducted or kidnapped are black.

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/Co...singPeople.gif
So why is it that we in the news media, seem to focus so much on stories that involve victims who are young, attractive, female, and white?

"Tamika's young, she's attractive, middle class," says her aunt. "The only thing that she's isn't is white. You know, I don't know what else it could be."

Before one can dismiss that criticism, there are numbers gathered by Media Analyst Andrew Tyndall, who regularly monitors network news: In the year Tamika's relatives were begging for airtime, the morning news broadcasts on NBC, ABC, and CBS aired a combined 941 minutes on the Laci Peterson story, 135 minutes on Lori Hacking (killed by her husband in Salt Lake City), and 98 minutes of coverage on Audrey Seiler (a University of Wisconsin student who faked her own abduction).

Read the rest here....http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8667821
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Co...ton.vsmall.jpg