D.C. police chief on Relisha Rudd: 'My hope is that she's alive'

There were no party favors or balloons in sight on Relisha Rudd’s ninth birthday.  There were no wrapped gifts, no cake and no laughing children celebrating the last single-digit birthday in the little girl’s life.

Instead, on a chilly Wednesday evening, a pair of Metro police detectives, dressed in suits, handed out missing person fliers – plastered with Rudd’s face – to people exiting a Washington, D.C. Metro station on the city’s southeast side.

“Today is Relisha’s birthday. Help us find Relisha,” one investigator said, as he handed a poster to each person willing to listen to his request. 

“Just take one,” he said, pushing a flier into another hand.

The little girl went missing in March. Police say she was last seen with Kahlil Tatum, a janitor who worked at D.C. General, the homeless shelter where Relisha lived with her family. Tatum, 52, befriended Relisha and her family in violation of the shelter’s fraternization policy.

At the end of March, police discovered Tatum’s body, the victim of suicide, at a local park. He was the last known person to see Relisha alive.

“My hope is that she’s alive,” D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier said. “I think back to all the stories that I’ve seen from around the United States where young women, typically, or young girls have gone missing and years later are found alive and now reunited with their families. That’s kind of my hope.”

Lanier admitted the case has been difficult from the beginning.

“We got a late start on Relisha, and that late start hurt us,” she said.  Lanier added that detectives are still missing key information that will help them determine the reason Relisha vanished.

Many in the community believe Relisha was trafficked.

“We’ve been doing this for quite some time and I do not feel in my heart of hearts that Relisha is not with us,” said Derrica Wilson, the CEO of the Black and Missing Foundation, a nonprofit established to bring awareness to missing persons of color.

Wilson, who helped distribute fliers, said she believes the investigation should expand to the Atlanta area, Florida and Richmond, Virginia. She said police were interested in those regions when Relisha first disappeared.

“I feel that she was actually sold and until someone proves me wrong, I still believe that and we’re going to continue to hold onto hope, but someone over there may hold the key,” she said. “The key is with someone in this area. We just need them to come forward."

Lanier said her detectives need more information, and she’s hoping someone with key information will come forward to help with the case.

“It could be just a small piece of information that somebody thinks is insignificant that they haven’t passed on that could help us now refocus an area that we haven’t looked so far,” she said.

Relisha’s mother, Shamika Young, has mainly stayed out of the spotlight recently, but earlier this month, she appeared in a Facebook video, offering a prayer for her daughter and asking for members of her own family to come forward with information she believes may help find her missing daughter.

“Heavenly Father,” she said in the video, “you and I both know that you forgive all, even your worst enemies. Heavenly Father, I ask that you strengthen and guide and give half of my family the courage to tell the truth. I need to say no names because they know who they are you know who they are and I know who they are.”