Families desperately searching N.J. city for 2 women missing for weeks | Calavia-Robertson

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It had only been five minutes since we’d met, and Tamika Owens was already crying. But really, how could she not? There we were standing in the middle of a cold, mostly empty parking lot in Newark talking about the daughter she has no clue where to find.

Tamika’s daughter, Destiny, who’s 29, and her girlfriend, Imani Glover, who’s 25, were reported missing out of Morristown and East Orange weeks ago.

The last time Tamika saw her daughter Destiny, who she calls her “best friend,” was on Christmas Eve and the last time they spoke was a few days later when she called to wish her a happy new year. I’m listening to Tamika speak and tuning into the desperation in her voice. In my head, I’m hearing my own mamá and remembering the many times she’s told me in Spanish that if she were ever to “lose” one of us — me or either of my sisters — that if we were ever somehow gone from her, she’d die.

I can imagine her here, too, doing whatever it took to find me, to find her daughter.

For Tamika, that’s been hounding police detectives, who are not always responsive, doing press interviews in hopes that someone watching or reading will have information about her daughter, and braving the cold to walk the streets of Newark passing out flyers and asking strangers if they’ve seen her.

Most of them say “no” and nod their heads. An older woman looks at the flyer, says a quick prayer for Destiny and Imani and tells us she’ll say another one before bed.

On Friday, Morristown police issued an update stating there had been “multiple sightings of Glover and Owens together in and around the area of Penn Station, Newark” — the area we were canvassing — “most recently on January 15.”

I wonder what that means. Were they seen by police or did officers receive calls from people purporting to have seen them?

For clarity, I called and emailed Morristown police Lt. Keith Cregan but did not hear back from him. Still, the release stated the search for Destiny and Imani “remains ongoing.”

Tamika said she’d recently been in touch with Imani’s father, who told her he’s also worried and is looking for his daughter. Imani’s mom, Shantia Glover, is searching for her, too. She was teary earlier this week when she told Pix 11 she just wants to see her “baby” and “know she’s fine.”

Tamika Owens, right, is the mother of missing woman Destiny Owens, 29. On Saturday, she took to the streets of Newark, where her daughter was last seen, to hand out flyers and ask people if they've seen her.

On the strip, by Broad Street and Market Street, a tall, husky man with a beard skims the flyer in our hands and smugly says, “They’re not missing, they’re around.”

“Around where?!,” Destiny’s aunt, “Aunt Cookie,” asks. But he just brushes her off and keeps walking past us without answering.

“They are missing,” Tamika says angrily when she hears his comment. “Destiny’s still missing, to me. She’s missing to me, to her mother.”

Others tell us Destiny was arrested. “She’s in the county [jail],” one says. “No, that can’t be,” Tamika sighs sadly. “I’ve already checked ...plus, I filed a missing person’s report with police. They would’ve already told me something.”

Some of the people we talk to try to comfort Tamika with words of hope, faith, and solace. Those who are with her, aunts, cousins, and Destiny’s younger sister Sieda, who’s 27, occasionally huddle around her to do the same.

That’s why they’re all here, they tell me — “alone together”— in the cold, windy streets of Newark, for Tamika and for Destiny. I wish more people were joining us in the search. I wish some police officers were walking the streets with us.

On the verge of tears, she tells me her biggest wish right now is for her daughter and Imani to be OK. “That’s all I really want to hear,” she says, her voice breaking. I nod my head and feel a lump in my throat. That’s all Tamika really wants to hear but she wants to hear it from Destiny.

Until that happens, until her daughter calls her, and she hears her voice again or until the moment they’re reunited, everything else is unfortunately just unverified chatter.

“We don’t want to assume the worst,” Sieda, Destiny’s sister, told me. “But you just don’t know, and it’s that not knowing part that is so heartbreaking and so hard.”

She told me the family is tight-knit. She and her sister speak often. Destiny is the firstborn and always calls her mom. They are all very close, she says. I think of my sisters, who are my best friends, and there’s that damn lump again.

“This is not normal,” she says, tears rolling down her face. “It’s never going to feel OK until we know she’s safe but the only way the problem can be solved I feel is by putting in the footwork to find her ourselves.”

Sieda Alexander, the younger sister of missing woman Destiny Owens, joined her mom, Tamika, as well as a few other relatives and friends, to search for her sister in downtown Newark. Her sister being missing is "not normal," she said in between tears.

The feeling of “having to take matters into their own hands,” is common for the families of missing people of color, says Derrica Wilson, CEO and co-founder of the Black & Missing Foundation, a national nonprofit founded in 2008 that focuses on bringing awareness to the cases of missing people of color around the country.

Wilson, a former deputy sheriff who spent more than 20 years in law enforcement, says as soon as she learned of Destiny and Imani’s disappearance on social media she quickly contacted Tamika to offer Black and Missing’s assistance and support. She says the group made and paid for the flyers Tamika and the others distributed.

The families her group serves, “the families of missing Black and brown people, Wilson says, are too often ignored, unheard and unhelped, by law enforcement and by the media.”

And that’s a whole lot of families when you consider that, according to the National Crime Information Center, a third of the nearly 300,000 girls and women reported missing in the U.S. in 2020 were Black.

What happens, Wilson said, is that when it comes to missing people of color sadly, “their cases, their stories,” tend to not be taken as seriously as those of people of other races.

“No one regardless of race, gender, or zip code, should ever have to experience this,” Wilson told me. “But for these families who are, we don’t want them to feel alone.”

Tamika Owens, left, mother of missing woman Destiny Owens, leads a search, with family and friends, for her daughter and Imani Glover, who her daughter is dating, in downtown Newark. Both women have been missing for weeks.

I join Tamika as she hands out the last couple of flyers and talks to the last few people about her search for Destiny before calling it a day.

“Honestly, I feel horrible,” she says. “I’m angry. I’m devastated. I’m...I just don’t know what to feel.” I walk next to her in silence and think about that “not knowing” Seida was talking about, that destroying sense of uncertainty that weighs heavy like a rock lodging itself in the middle of your chest.

“I really, really hope you find your daughter,” I tell her before we say our goodbyes and walk away.

Anyone with information is asked to call Newark police at 1-877-695-8477 or East Orange police at 973-266-5030.

Det. Robert Edwards of the Morristown police can be reached at 973-292-6646 or by email at R-Edwards@morristownpolice.org.

Daysi Calavia-Robertson may be reached at dcalavia-robertson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Instagram at @presspassdaysi or Twitter @presspassdaysi. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Here’s how to submit an op-ed or Letter to the Editor. Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow us on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and on Facebook at NJ.com Opinion. Get the latest news updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.com’s newsletters.

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