Black and Missing : Where Is D.C. 8-year-old Relisha Rudd?

Relisha Rudd has been missing for nearly a month but it took authorities only recently to notice her disappearance.

Where is Relisha Rudd?

Police searching for the eight-year-old girl who disappeared from a homeless shelter almost a month ago have said they believe she may have been killed by a janitor.

Relisha had vanished for days from her impoverished neighborhood in Washington D.C before anyone reported her missing. Until recently, the case has gone largely unreported outside of local media.

After Relisha’s disappearance sparked national attention, her difficult past comes to light as authorities try to piece together what happened to the missing 8-year-old from Washington, D.C.

Possible suspect

Authorities do know she was last seen with a man named Kahlil Malik Tatum, 51, a janitor at a homeless shelter at the old D.C. General Hospital, where Relisha lived. He is wanted for killing his wife and is believed to have abducted Relisha. They are now looking for them up and down the East Coast.

What authorities never knew is that Relisha was missing way before they were notified. It’s like Relisha was swept under the rug and no one cared.

Authorities uncovered that her absences started to piled up at Daniel A. Payne Elementary School, topping 30 days this year before someone notified the D.C. Child and Family Service Agency on March 13.

It then took an additional six days before the city agency took action. By then, Relisha, 8, had gone missing.

With the search coming into it’s eighth day with no breaks, Rudd’s difficult past has come into focus.

According the Washington Post, guardians, social workers and employees at the subsidized shelter had extensive contact with Relisha but missed or ignored repeated opportunities to intervene weeks or even years ago, records show.

City records show that D.C. agencies had contact with Relisha and her family beginning in 2007, when the girl was 1 or 2. The records show instances of physical abuse, filthy living conditions and a lack of food. But social workers did not remove Relisha and her siblings from the home, city records show.

Rudd’s mother told authorities the last time she seen Relisha was on February 26th when she left Relisha in the care of Tatum. Relisha’s mother never reported her daughter missing, and authorities were alerted only after her extended absence from school.

Rudd’s mother gave permission for Relisha to be with Tatum, according to Metropolitan Police Department Police Chief Cathy Lanier. Around that time, police determined that Tatum bought some black 42-gallon trash bags in D.C. Tatum was seen in the Kenilworth Aquatic Center and Park for a period of time.

Tatum was seen at work and other places, between March 2nd and March 20th, but Relisha Rudd was not with him.

But now authorities have feared the worst that Relisha may no longer be with us.

On Thursday, DC police chief Cathy Lanier told a press conference that while there was hope Relisha was still alive, police believed Tatum may have killed her. She added that parts of the search had now entered a “recovery operation”.

“We can’t ignore the possibility he may have killed her,” she said.

Lanier stated that the search for Relisha has expanded to parks and scrub-land near the homeless shelter.

The FBI released video footage of Relisha leaving a bedroom and walking down a hallway with 51-year-old Kahlil Tatum at a Holiday Inn Express in north-east DC on 26 February – the day she was first left in his care.

Relisha Rudd has been missing since February 26th. She was last seen at the homeless shelter in Northeast D.C. where she was living with her mother.

She was reported missing in March and an Amber Alert was issued for the girl on March 20.

The FBI has been displaying Relisha’s face on billboards along a 700-mile stretch of the east coast, offering a $25,000 reward for helping to establish her whereabouts.