'They do not care': Ex-officer fights for answers in pregnant teen's death, searches for missing people of color

Kimberly Kite spent five years working in law enforcement before cutting ties, frustrated with the lack of urgency authorities showed in finding missing people of color.

Based in South Carolina, she says she’s all too familiar with the “good ol’ boy” mentality, where citizens are overlooked and treated as if their lives are less valuable than others simply because they’re Black.

Kite said she quit the force 14 years ago so she could help families in ways they truly need her assistance.

“It wasn't the help I wanted to give people,” Kite told USA TODAY on Feb. 28, adding that she didn’t want to focus on giving people tickets and making arrests for the sake of doing it.

When Kite left the force, she was in Eutawville, a community about 55 miles northwest of Charleston.

“My focus really became about giving the people in that town a voice and a say when they have never had that and that's exactly what I did,” Kite said.

The Broken Link Foundation has worked on at least 10 investigations and helped to locate two runaways and Kite, who is white, often speaks out about racism and its role in missing person investigations on her organization’s Facebook page. 

“Why do I have to be Black to see what the problem is, to know what the problem is, to know that it’s not right, it’s not fair?” she asked. “It's in every state. I know that. My state is my focus. I know what South Carolina is made up of when it comes to law enforcement. We are the good ol' boy system.”

Families don’t know who to trust

Kite said her organization never reaches out to families because so often, they live in fear and don’t know who to trust. The Broken Link Foundation doesn’t want to bombard them, she said.

One recent case her organization has been involved in is the search to find out what happened to teenager Maylashia Hogg.

Hogg was nine months pregnant and her labor was set to be induced on Feb. 13, officials told multiple news outlets. She was last seen between Feb. 6 and Feb. 8, a police report provided by the Barnwell Police Department shows.

A family friend, Ariel Timms, reached out to the Broken Link Foundation to ask for help finding the teenager, Kite said. The organization immediately began posting fliers.

“We started contacting other family,” Kite said. “I spoke with her stepfather, who was very close with her. Barnwell City police, Barnwell County Sheriff would never return our calls and on the 18th, Maylashia was found deceased.”

Kite said police never spoke to the teen’s stepfather, nor did they speak to her cousins. They spoke to her aunt, who lives outside of the city, but reported the 17-year-old missing. She said police also spoke to the teen’s grandfather, who she lived with, as well as her uncle.

She said police and the coroner’s office have refused to release the teen’s cause of death, citing an open investigation.

The Barnwell Police Department previously told USA TODAY the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division’s (SLED) Special Victims Unit had taken over the investigation.

“SLED’s investigation is active and ongoing,” wrote spokesperson Renée Wunderlich in an email last month.

Neither Barnwell police, the Barnwell County Sheriff's Office, the Barnwell County Coroner or SLED immediately responded to requests for comments this week.

More on SC death investigation:Pregnant teen found dead in a ditch days after she was to be induced

Teenager was a ‘sour patch’ kid with a good heart

Timms found out about Maylashia when other loved ones posted about her being missing on Facebook. The teen had a history of running away from home, but usually returned shortly after.

“I knew something was wrong because she always, always came back (in) like one or two days,” Timms said. “I knew it was different because she's pregnant. Nine months pregnant, she wouldn’t have just disappeared.”

Multiple loved ones said she was last seen at her boyfriend’s home at the Colony West Apartments in Barnwell. 

Timms reached out to the Broken Link Foundation to ask for help when she noticed the Barnwell Sheriff Office’s post about a white man who was missing from the same apartment complex, Michael Gene Still.

A scan of the sheriff’s office Facebook page shows no individual posts about 17-year-old  Maylashia other than one stating there is no "concrete evidence" that Still’s disappearance is related to her case.

“We continue to work closely with Barnwell Police Dept. to share information and follow all leads,” the sheriff’s office wrote.

Timms, the family friend who contacted the Broken Link Foundation to ask for help finding the teenager, said Maylashia’s life matters just as much as anyone else’s.

She met Maylashia when she was about 4 or 5 years old. 

“She was active,” Timms laughed, remembering the teen. “She had a good heart. She said what’s on her mind.”

She was a handful but she was a good person, Timms said.

Maylashia lost her mother, Charity Hogg, in January 2021. She was planning to make her baby her mother’s namesake and had chosen the name London Charity, Timms said.

“I just want people to know that she was somebody regardless of her past,” Timms said.

Teen’s cousin wants justice for expectant mother

Janearia Rice is Maylashia’s first cousin, related to her through her biological father. Rice lovingly called her cousin a “sour patch” kid. Just two years apart, they’d get annoyed with each other but make up quickly after.

“We would just be friends like nothing happened,” Rice told USA TODAY on Feb. 29. “Sometimes we don't even apologize. We’d just start talking. You can't hold grudges.”

She said police aren’t telling their family much, not even her grandmother. The family had a memorial service for Maylashia with no answers.

“There was no body in the casket,” Rice said, adding that she’s not even sure where her cousin’s remains are. They aren’t sure if the body is still at the coroner’s office.

“These are the questions that this child’s grandmother wants to know and she cannot even get these answers because no one is speaking to her,” Rice said.

Rice said authorities in Barnwell have failed to thoroughly investigate her cousin’s case.

“We just want closure,” she said. “Give us a cause of death or something … Our hearts are aching. We can't sleep at night.”

'Alarming' national trend

Maylashia’s case and the Broken Link Foundation spotlight a disparity seen nationwide.

Black women and girls make up for about 7% of the U.S. population, but accounted for approximately 18% of all missing persons cases in 2022, data from the National Crime Information Center and U.S. Census Bureau showed.

"Those statistics just hit really hard. It's really alarming," Treva Lindsey, a writer and professor of women's studies at The Ohio State University, previously told USA TODAY.

Previously:Americans are fixating on Carlee Russell. What about other missing Black women?

'Finding them safe doesn't happen as often as you want them to'

The Broken Link Foundation, which is working to get answers for Maylashia’s family, is made up of Kite, a dive team, another former law enforcement officer, as well as a researcher who has no law enforcement background but is “phenomenal at investigative research,” Kite said.

Typically when families contact her foundation, Kite has an idea as to whether she’s trying to find someone safely or make a recovery.

“Finding them safe doesn't happen as often as you want them to,” she said. “Typically when we're called in, usually it’s down the road and it's when a family realizes that ‘Hey, police are not doing what they're supposed to be doing.’ There's no communication in our state unless it's a blond haired, blue eyed, white female. The police don't care. They do not care.”

Police typically don’t care if missing people have a history of addiction or are runaways either, she said.

“It's a junkie,” she said she has heard detectives say. “Why am I going to waste my time?”

The foundation has been involved in the search for Jamilla Shanaé Smith, who was reported missing on Dec. 3. Her ex-boyfriend has been charged in relation to her death but her remains have yet to be found.

The Broken Link Foundation has also helped find runaway teenagers who ended up in other parts of the U.S., including one who was in Florida with a man in his late 30s she met gaming online. 

“Had they listened to the families and not gone by their personal bias opinions, they would’ve found these girls sooner,” Kite said.

The same could be said for Maylashia, Kite said, whose name was known because she ran away from home multiple times prior to her death.

“When Maylashia went missing this time, they didn't send out dogs,” Kite said. “They didn't send out drones. They didn't go look for her. They put out fliers. That was all they did.”

She added that search efforts for the 47-year old white man missing from the same apartment complex, Michael Still, involved dogs and search parties.

“They had everything out for him,” Kite said. “There's no equality. There's no fairness.”

The search to find out what happened to Maylashia and her unborn child is still on, Kite said.

Kite handles many of the group’s tasks on her own, including running the organization’s Facebook page, distributing fliers and advocating for families.

But help may be on the way, she said.

“Maylashia’s case has brought in a lot of people reaching out about volunteering, which is a good thing,” she said.

To reach the Broken Link Foundation, visit www.facebook.com/Brokenlinkfoundation.

Saleen Martin is a reporter on USA TODAY's NOW team. She is from Norfolk, Virginia – the 757. Follow her on Twitter at@SaleenMartin or email her atsdmartin@usatoday.com.