Who killed Tioni Theus? Straight-A student, 16, shot in neck and dumped on LA highway
COMPTON, CALIFORNIA: A $10,000-reward has been approved by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to help find the suspect, or suspects, who killed a 16-year-old girl and dumped her body alongside the 110 Freeway in South LA. Tioni Theus, a girl from Compton, was last seen on January 7, leaving her father's house to go to a party. Police found her the next morning on the Interstate 110 on-ramp at Manchester Avenue. California Highway Patrol officers have determined her death to be "an apparent homicide".
Police are now seeking the public's help to identify a suspect and a motive. They are also trying to locate a vehicle with a possible connection with the murder. "Our family is heavily on the pursuit to find justice, get closure and start healing," Theus' cousin, Nafeesah Kincy, told Fox News Digital. "This has absolutely been devastating to us, and it should be to the community as well — we have to get to a point where we won’t tolerate young girls being murdered and forgotten about."
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LA City Council members Curren Price and Marqueece Harris-Dawson have also introduced a motion to set aside $50,000 in city funds for reward money. Another $10,000 is being pushed by County Supervisor Holly Mitchell from her municipality. "Tioni was just beginning her life, with all the possibilities ahead of her, ripped away in an instant," Price said in a statement. "It’s heart-wrenching to think that someone who had so much promise and the world at her feet could be taken in such a cruel manner." She also said that Theus was a straight-A student, and that a "heartless" suspect or suspects is/are behind her tragic death.
In another recent incident, George Floyd's great-niece Arianna, 4, was shot while in her bed in an attack at their Houston family home. Arianna had attended several protests. The bullet was reportedly fired by an unidentified suspect or more than one suspect. Arianna had suffered a punctured lung and liver and three broken ribs. She had undergone surgery and is in a hospital.
Four adults and two children were inside the home on Yellowstone Blvd in south Houston at the time of the attack. Arianna was sleeping in her bed when she was shot, her father claimed. "My daughter jumped up and said, 'Daddy, I been hit' and I was shocked until I seen the blood and I realized my 4-year-old daughter was really hit," Delane, her father, told ABC 13. "She didn't know what was going on. She was asleep." Houston police said that they do not have a suspect yet nor a motive. According to Delane, he has reason to believe their house was targeted.