A vigil for Relisha Rudd. Photo by Sarah Anne Hughes.
Outside the old D.C. General hospital, which is currently home to 228 of the over 760 homeless families sheltered by the city, dozens of people gathered to make an appeal and hope for the safe return of eight-year-old Relisha Rudd.
“I miss my daughter,” Relisha’s mother Shamika Young said tearfully, as one woman in crowd shouted, “We’re here for you.” The girl was last seen at D.C. General on February 26, and police say she may be in the company of Kahlil Malik Tatum, a janitor at the shelter charged this week with the murder of his wife. When Antonio Wheeler, Relisha’s stephfather, took the microphone, he couldn’t find any words. “I want you back,” he said through tears.
“In love, she will come back,” said Devin Walker, one of the many volunteers from the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project to speak at the vigil. Relisha is one of the homeless children who participates in the Playtime Project’s weekly programs.
One volunteer spoke of how Relisha cares for baby dolls and a garden near the Stadium-Armory Metro station. “Now we’re here tonight to ask the city, to ask the country, to ask everyone to help take care of Relisha,” she said.
A young resident of D.C. General and a playmate of Relisha’s said the missing girl always made her happy when she was angry: “Every time I woke up in the morning and see Relisha, she made me happy.”
Relisha Tenau Rudd. Via MPD.“Your whole city is taking this as one of the most urgent matters we could possibly face,” Councilmember Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) said, adding that D.C. is in contact with officials up and down the eastern seaboard. “Your city is taking this to heart. We’re all terrified by this, but we’re all motivated to get this solved.”
One resident of the shelter said “everybody knows” Tatum, the man suspected to be with Relisha, adding that he once bought her daughter a fish tank. Another resident questioned the background check process at D.C. General.
Jamila Larson, co-founder of the Playtime Project, praised the showing of community at the vigil: “We must work together as a community to alter the circumstances that made it possible for this unspeakable event to happen in the first place.”
After the vigil, Larson said she agreed with Councilmember Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), who heads the Committee on Human Services: D.C. General either needs to be torn down or made decent. Larson said the shelter needs case workers who are dedicated to the children. “These children need clinical case management,” she said. “There needs to be staff that knocks on doors, knows who’s in school.” Larson also questioned how Tatum was able to take Relisha out of the “underresourced” shelter, a “clear boundary violation.”
“Relisha, her parents and her brothers need a home,” a woman who took the microphone at the end of the vigil said. “They’re in a small room, packed like rats. This brings a lot of stress and tension. The man that took her was trying to relieve her of this stress. As a community, I think we should do something so they can get their own home. If they had their own home, this situation would not have arisen.”
