MONAE TURNAGE - 13 yo - Baltimore MD

Poster's Note: I checked various sites and could find no MSM resports of a missing Baltimore teen. It would appear that the victim was discovered before the media was informed.

Baltimore City Police said the body of a missing 13-year-old girl has been found in northeast Baltimore.

Police said the girl's body was discovered under some plastic trash bags by children Sunday in the 1600 block of Cliftview Avenue.

Investigators said the girl was reported missing Saturday. At this early stage in the investigation, police are calling the death suspicious.

Officials have not said how the girl died.

Homicide detectives said they are investigating as is customary with all missing children deaths.

Officials said the girl's body will undergo an autopsy at the State Medical Examiner's Office.

No other details have been released.

http://wbal.com/article/87374/2/template-story/Body-Of-Missing-Teen-Found

A 13-year-old girl was found slain Sunday evening in the Darley Park neighborhood of northeast Baltimore, police reported.

Family members confirmed the girl's identity as Monae Turnage, according to local newscasts. They had reported her missing early Sunday.

The body was found about 6 p.m. in the backyard of a two-story, brick rowhouse in the 1600 block of Cliftview Ave., said Detective Donny Moses. Monae's aunt, Paulette Marshall, confirmed on newscasts that the girl's 16-year-old brother and neighborhood youths found the clothed body while looking through alleys.

Moses said the body, covered with plastic trash bags, had suffered from trauma, but he was not specific. He confirmed the East Baltimore girl's family had reported her missing early Sunday.

"She left home last night to go rollerskating and never returned," Marshall told WJZ.

Marshall said the family became alarmed and called police at 1 a.m. to report Monae missing "because she didn't come home and [she's never done] anything like this before and we knew that."

Police are interested in questioning the people with whom the girl was supposed to have gone skating, Moses said, "in hopes of finding more information about how she died."

Moses said the girl was declared dead at the scene. The state medical examiner's office is to conduct an autopsy Monday.

On Sunday night, neighbors stood on porches or in yards adjoining the alley. Several said they did not see or hear anything unusual Sunday and didn't know about a body being found until they saw police cars in the area and officers knocking on doors.

Shawnda Robinson said Monae was a student at William C. March Middle School, several blocks from where the body was found.

Michelle Davis, who lives several houses away from the body was found, said "I feel so sad because I have a 13-year-old daughter and a 15-year-old daughter and that's too close to home. That's a baby."

Neighbors pointed to the last time a child was fatally injured in the Darley Park area, in May, when 12-year-old Sean Johnson was killed by a stray bullet while watching television with friends on the front porch of a house in the 1700 block of Cliftview Ave. Police said he was caught in the crossfire of two men shooting at each other.

Neighbor John Lopez told WJZ he thought the girl's killer was "a monster."

"What kind of human being would do something like that to a 13-year-old child?" he said.

Police ask anyone with information to call Baltimore City homicide detectives.


http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/breaking/bs-md-ci-girl-slain-20120304,0,1131394.story

A 13-year-old girl is dead, her East Baltimore family devastated and looking for answers.
Gigi Barnett has emotional reaction from the girl’s family.

It was the young girl’s brother who found her buried under trash in an alley.

The grief-stricken mother is speechless and still in shock, not able to comprehend the murder of her 13-year-old daughter Monae Turnage.

“She left home last night to go roller skating and never returned,” Paulette Marshall, Turnage’s aunt, said.

She says the family became alarmed and feared the worst, even called police at 1 a.m. to report the young girl missing.

“Because she didn’t come home and she’s never did anything like this before and we knew that,” Marshall said. “So, for her not to come home was just out of the ordinary and we called the police last night and told them that we think that she’s missing.”

The family says they were told to wait 24 hours before filing a missing persons report.

But the victim’s brother and some friends went out searching for her. Just before 6 p.m. Sunday, they found her in an alley behind the 1600-block of Cliftview Avenue, her body covered with trash.

“She does have some signs of trauma but we are unsure of what she was killed from,” Det. Donny Moses of the Baltimore City Police Department said.

Detectives are going door-to-door questioning neighbors for clues and interviewing the young girl’s friends.

“She didn’t walk out there by herself,” Moses said. “Someone pulled her out there. So if you saw anything suspicious, anything unusual, please give us a call.”

Her family is heartbroken.

“We’ve never had any problems out of her. She was just a really good kid,” Marshall said.

And neighbors are left wondering who could be so cruel.

“That’s a monster. What kind of human being would do something like that to a 13-year-old child,” neighbor John Lopez said. “I can’t even describe the feeling. I have a child myself. I have two kids. And it’s a monster.”

The victim’s body is being taken to the Medical Examiner’s Office for an autopsy so they can determine exactly how she died.

Anyone with information is urged to call Baltimore City homicide detectives.

http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2012/03/05/13-year-old-girls-body-found-in-alley/

A 13-year-old girl whose body was found buried under trash bags
behind a Northeast Baltimore rowhouse had been shot by her young
companions while playing with a rifle, according to relatives and police
who arrested two youths Monday.
The boys, 12 and 13, were being
held on juvenile charges of involuntary manslaughter, and police did not
release their names. Baltimore police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi
described the case as "an absolute unspeakable tragedy," while the
relatives of Monae Turnage said the charges were not severe enough.
Monae's
mother, 56-year-old Edith Turnage, noted that the police account says
one of the youths accidentally shot the girl in the chest Saturday,
dragged her body out of a house she was visiting and across an alley,
and concealed it in a backyard six blocks from her home.




Then, Turnage said, the youth
called her twice Saturday night, once to say her daughter, an
eighth-grade middle school student, was on her way home.
"They had
plenty of time to think about this," Turnage said. "By the time he
called me the second time, to ask, 'Is she home yet?' my daughter was
already dead." Relatives searched back alleys before the victim's
16-year-old brother found the body Sunday evening in back of the 1600
block of Cliftview Ave., 19 hours after the mother said she got her
first call from one of the youths.
Police said detectives have
much work ahead of them to find out who owned the .22-caliber rifle, how
it got into the rowhouse of one of the boys and, said Guglielmi, "how
it got into the hands of a child." Police said there was an adult home
at the time of the shooting but would not say where officers found the
weapon.
The suspects are too young to be charged as adults; that
is reserved for children as young as 14 in capital cases and 16 in other
crimes, such as manslaughter.
"She was a very intelligent young
lady, a very pretty young lady, a very outspoken young lady," Turnage
said of her daughter. "She wanted to do something with her life." She
lamented a life lost by "somebody she was with, somebody she trusted."
Monae
attended William C. March Middle School — halfway between her home in
the 1700 block of Sinclair Lane and the spot where her body was found.
She earned so many perfect attendance certificates that her mother only
hung a few at time on her bedroom mirror. She worked in a school program
helping victims of child abuse, played lacrosse, sang in her church
choir and wanted to be a pediatrician.
"She was a jolly, outgoing
child," said her stepfather, Ricky Bailey, who works as a custodian at
Notre Dame of Maryland University. He described her as a "tomboy" who
loved to ride bicycles and play sports, but also a girl who loved
modeling clothes and shopping in high-end stores with her mother.
Her
bedroom has pink-striped wallpaper, a bed with a pink canopy and is
decorated with Disney posters and Dora the Explorer trinkets. A bible on
her bed stand was opened to Leviticus 22, with passages she highlighted
for her class at South Broadway Baptist Church.
Saturday night
started ordinarily enough in the Turnage household. The family had
dinner, played cards and then about 8 p.m. Monae headed out to go roller
skating at Skateland Putty Hill near White Marsh.
She
walked to a corner sub shop and then to her friend's house in Darley
Park, where the boy's mother was to drive four friends to the rink. One
of the youths didn't have enough money to get in, Turnage said, and the
group returned.
About 10 p.m., Turnage said, the boy who lived on
Darley Avenue phoned and assured her that Monae was "getting ready to
leave" and go home. He called less than a half-hour later, she said, to
see if she had arrived.
"I knew then that something wasn't right," Turnage said. "We waited a while, and she didn't show up."
About
1 a.m. Sunday, the family called police. At daylight, family members
started combing through alleys and streets around Darley Park, just off Harford Road.
About 6 p.m., the victim's brother spotted a leg sticking out from
trash behind a house on Cliftview Avenue, directly across an alley from
the back of the rowhouse Monae had been in on Darley Avenue.
Monae's
aunt, Patricia Marshall, identified the body for police. "I saw the
trash that had been put over her," she said, describing her niece
wearing the same purple jeans and white blouse she had worn to go roller
skating.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/breaking/bs-md-ci-darley-park-girl-folo-20120305,0,1179698.story

What a horrible tragedy. I can't imagine the grief the family must be going through.

BALTIMORE - No mother should be staring at her daughter's death certificate; no parent should be planning the funeral of their 13 year old, but as a Northeast Baltimore family struggles through intense grief, yet another detail emerges making this all the more unimaginable.

"I feel sick to my stomach because every time I hear bits and pieces...it's terrifying," said slain teen Monae Turnage’s mother Edith

It is even more terrifying because today Baltimore Police Department Spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi says the BPD suspended an off-duty officer for his “conduct” after the shooting death of Monae Turnage.

Turnage's family says the older sister of one of the juveniles charged yesterday with involuntary manslaughter has a relationship with that officer and believes the cop advised the boys after the accidental shooting death; Monae’s body was later discovered beneath trash bags in an alley.

"How do you do this? You're talking about a 13 year old kid. 12 and 13 year old children that did something and you covered it up. Where's the justice in this?" asked Monae’s aunt Paulette Marshall.

Justice is a process city police say they are taking seriously and are pursuing.

While the department says it cannot comment on details about the suspension or respond directly to the family’s claims, it is working to trace the gun the boys were playing with as well as investigating the beliefs of the Turnage family.

A claim Monae's mother believes makes sense.

"Because I don't think they would know how to drag a body outside and cover, although they can see that on the news but still, I think somebody in there, something else happened. Some kind of way something happened. Somebody advised them to do this," said Edith Turnage.

An emerging gap in an already tragic story that could very well be explained by either an internal or even criminal investigation.

Read more: http://www.abc2news.com/dpp/news/crime_checker/baltimore_city_crime/source-city-police-officer-suspended-in-connection-with-13-year-old-girls-death#ixzz1ogQhTZ5a