Vanita Richardson and Truvenia Campbell found dead underneath Etowah Bridge

Source: Mihajlo Maricic / EyeEm / Getty

Sadly, it appears that we are once again in an ongoing news cycle where the murder of Black people is a regular occurrence.

In the midst of the Ahmaud Arbery case, the Breonna Taylor case, the Sean Reed case, there was another Georgia homicide that was shocking, grisly, and reeks of lynchings of the past. According to WSB-TV, the bodies of 18-year-old Vanita Richardson and her 30-year-old stepsister Truvenia Campbell were found underneath the East Rome Bypass bridge last Wednesday with shredded clothes and bags over their heads. The Georgia Bureau of Investigations (GBI) still has not released the women’s cause of death even after the autopsies were completed. Their deaths, however, are being ruled a homicide.

Although the police seem to be very tight-lipped with information, the details about the tattered clothes and bags over the women’s heads came from directly from the first-hand account of the maintenance workers who discovered Vanita and Truvenia’s bodies.

Vanita was a senior at Armuchee High School and was scheduled to graduate this past weekend. The school district released the following statement via Twitter.

At this moment, the state of Georgia is a powder keg that could potentially explode if we continue to get the news that more Black people are being killed under the flag of racism or that the police have incompetently handled a murder case involving a Black person. Wouldn’t surprise us at all if the GBI and Floyd County are suppressing info to keep that from happening.

In the words of the great M’Baku: We will not have it, oh! Having bags placed over their heads with clothes that have been ripped to shreds is a disturbing image and if we don’t get some answers soon there is going to be a problem.

Rest in peace Vanita Richardson and Truvenia Campbell.