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Oluwatoyin Salau: BLM protester found dead after tweeting about sexual assault and vanishing 9 days ago

75-year-old AARP volunteer also found dead during missing person investigations

Justin Vallejo
New York
Monday 15 June 2020 18:35 BST
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A woman paints a ‘Black Lives Matter’ mural on a street in Brooklyn, New York
A woman paints a ‘Black Lives Matter’ mural on a street in Brooklyn, New York (Reuters)

The bodies of two missing women found in Florida included 19-year-old Oluwatoyin Salau, who disappeared shortly after tweeting about being molested.

Tallahassee Police said she was found on Saturday night along with 75-year-old Victoria Sims, and that their deaths were being treated as homicides.

A 49-year-old man, Aaron Glee Jr, has been taken into custody and the investigation has been turned over to the violent crime unit.

Ms Salau had joined Black Lives Matter protests in the past few weeks, reciting the name of George Floyd and other black people killed by law enforcements to seek justice for their deaths.

"I don't want their names gone in vain," she said during a protest in front of Tallahassee Police Department in May.

In the hours before going missing from the area of Orange Avenue and Wahnish Way on 6 June, Ms Salau made multiple tweets recounting a sexual assault by someone "disguised as a man of God".

"Anyways I was molested in Tallahassee, Florida by a black man this morning at 5:30 on Richview and Park Ave. The man offered to give me a ride to find someplace to sleep and recollect my belongings from a church I refuged to a couple days back to escape unjust living conditions," Ms Salau tweeted.

"When we arrived at his house he offered me a shower and I thanked him and shower and he gave me a change of clothes. He exposed himself to me by peeing with the bathroom open obviously knowing I was out of it. I told him about a sexual assault situation that happened..."

She also tweeted about a separate situation where another man tried to force her into sexual acts before harassing her for days.

"Before I realized what happened to me I looked over and his clothes were completely off. Once I saw he was asleep I escaped from the house and started walking from Richview Road to anywhere else," she wrote.

As part of their investigations into a missing person report, Tallahassee police arrived at a house on Monday Road at around 9.15pm on Saturday.

A missing person alert reportedly went out at 8.57pm after Ms Sims was last seen on Blair Stone Road, near Monday Road, driving a Toyota Camry.

"During the course of the investigation, two deceased people were located in the area," police said in a statement.

Ms Sims was reportedly a retired Department of Elder Affairs employee and community volunteer, with the AARP saying in a statement that she worked tirelessly to improve the lives of others.

"The AARP family of volunteers and staff has suffered a grievous loss," said David Bruns, an AARP spokesman.

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