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15-year-old found dead Tuesday was here to visit sister

cigaretteman

HR King
May 29, 2001
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A teenage girl who took advanced classes and played on her high school basketball team — and dreamed of someday running her own business — was found dead this week with a bullet wound in a crashed car she had borrowed while visiting her older sister in Cedar Rapids, according to interviews and authorities.


Cedar Rapids police Wednesday identified Tyliyah Whitis, 15, of Peoria, Ill., as the teen who was discovered the previous morning in the one-car crash outside the Hawthorne Hills apartment complex in the 2200 block of C Street SW. Police said Whitis has been shot at least once and the vehicle had sustained significant damage.


“Never in a million years would I have thought this would ever happen to my sister,” said T’yanna Nesby, 23, of Cedar Rapids. “Tyliyah was so smart — she was never the type of person to put herself in danger or take crazy risks. That’s why it’s so shocking that she was killed like this.”


Cedar Rapids public safety spokesman Greg Buelow said the cause and manner of death has not yet been determined — that will come from the State Medical Examiner’s Office following an autopsy. But police are investigating the death as a homicide.


Nesby said the car Whitis was found in was hers.


“I found out what happened Tuesday morning when I reported my car missing,” Nesby on Wednesday told The Gazette. “Police put two and two together and came to my house to talk to me and that’s when I found out my sister was gone.”


On Monday night, Nesby said she went to bed about 11 p.m. The next morning, she noticed her car was gone and her sister was not home. Nesby said she had an idea of why her sister might have taken the car, but she declined to share it as she didn’t want to jeopardize the investigation. She did say she believes Whitis may have been targeted in a possible robbery-gone-bad scenario.


Police have not released any information about what they think Whitis was doing at the Hawthorne Hills complex — where she was not staying — Monday night into Tuesday morning or what happened in the moments leading up to her death. No arrests have been announced and police have not publicly identified any persons of interest in the case.


A rising high school sophomore in Peoria, Whitis came to Cedar Rapids about two weeks ago to stay with Nesby.


“She was so helpful with her nephews and nieces,” Nesby said. “She really didn’t go out much or do much outside of my house. You know, it’s summer so she wasn’t working and didn’t have school, and she wasn’t too concerned about friends.”


Most of the time, Nesby said her sister stayed home and watched Nesby’s son while Nesby was at work.


“She was not just out there running the streets,” Nesby said. “Whatever the reason she took my car Monday night, I really want people to know that it had to have been something serious, because she would not have done that for no rhyme or reason.”


Back home in Peoria, where she lived with her mother, Whitis was a straight-A student taking advanced classes and playing basketball on the school team, Nesby said. Outside of school, Nesby said her sister worked two jobs — one at an ice cream shop and another at a “corner store.”


She wanted to be a business owner, Nesby said.


“She wanted to go into real estate — she was interested in real estate and she wanted to sell things,” Nesby said. “She wanted to make a lot of money, and I’m telling you, she was a hustler. She was going to do it.”


Whitis also had talked about owning a barbershop, Nesby said, noting they had family members in Waterloo who had owned barbershops.


“She wanted to own her own business,” Nesby said. “Whatever she ended up doing, she wanted to be the owner.”


Whitis was the “baby sister,” Nesby said — the youngest of four, including Nesby and two brothers, ages 25 and 21. The family is originally from Waterloo, she said, and later moved to Cedar Rapids.


Cedar Rapids Community School District Director of Communications Colleen Scholer confirmed Wednesday that Whitis attended Harrison Elementary School from second to fifth grades — from December 2013 to June 2017 — and started sixth grade at Roosevelt Middle School in 2017, but did not finish the school year.


That’s when Whitis moved to Peoria where she lived with her mom, Nesby said.


“She didn’t deserve this,” Nesby said. “She was so smart and very selfless. She was an auntie and a sister. She was very strong and mature at 15 — most people who met her thought that she was 18 or 21. You would never know that she was so young.


“And, I want to say this because I think it’s so important to say: Tyliyah knew who she was and she knew who she wasn’t. I always felt inspired by her because she was so true to who she was and she never cared about whether or not someone was going to accept her or whether it was socially acceptable to be herself. She understood her truth at such a young age, and it was just incredible to witness.”


“I just want justice for my sister,” Nesby added. “And I have to say that the Cedar Rapids police force has been really great. You know there has been so much tension between police brutality and minorities, and it just seems like we don’t expect much of them, but they have put their best foot forward in this. They’ve been as transparent as they could, they’ve been empathetic, they’ve been compassionate and honestly I think … that justice will be served and I do trust they will find who did this.”


A GoFundMe page has been set up for the family to raise money for funeral expenses. The fundraising page, which was created by a woman identifying as Nesby’s aunt, set a goal of $20,000. As of 5 p.m. Wednesday the page had raised $869.


Police are asking that anyone with information about Whitis’ death call Cedar Rapids police at (319) 286-5491 or Linn County CrimeStoppers at 1-(800) CS-CRIME.

 
 
More like odd,.. Fifteen year old, here from out of state , takes her sister's car and disappears in the middle of the night, in a city she's likely not familiar with, for possible reasons her sister won't disclose, which might be associated with a robbery gone bad?... WTF.
When my niece was 18, she and her boyfriend were hanging out with boyfriend's BF. The BF had quite a record for his age. Welp, one night they end up in the hood at least 45 mins from the nice neighborhoods my niece and boyfriend live in. Nobody knows what they were doing there, one said hanging out, one said buying weed. So the best friend has a gun that "accidentally " discharges killing my niece's boyfriend. I asked my sister-in-law WTF was going on and she's like "oh you know, kids just being kids, I don't really know." That was the end of it in her mind, no big deal. Weird and stupid shit happens, especially with teenagers. I don't know if the teenager in this case was supervised, but my niece sure wasn't.
 
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What a terrible situation. As Rifler mentioned, this whole scenario is very odd.
A 15 year old, that is a straight A student taking a car in the middle of the night doesn't add up. The kids that get all A grades typically follow rules closely.
I have a feeling the sister knows a lot more than the article mentioned.
 
What a terrible situation. As Rifler mentioned, this whole scenario is very odd.
A 15 year old, that is a straight A student taking a car in the middle of the night doesn't add up. The kids that get all A grades typically follow rules closely.
I have a feeling the sister knows a lot more than the article mentioned.
She didn't deserve this but there is more to the story.....and the sister who was to be responsible for her is where to start.
 
More like odd,.. Fifteen year old, here from out of state , takes her sister's car and disappears in the middle of the night, in a city she's likely not familiar with, for possible reasons her sister won't disclose, which might be associated with a robbery gone bad?... WTF.
Yes it is quite odd and unfortunate. I feel like we read only half of what was actually going on.
 
The sister is point #1, keys should have never been given to a 15 year old. Until the child is 16 she is the one responsible for her if she was currently in her care. My guess is something went bad at the house and she was placed in the car. Will be curious to see what the investigators find.
 
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What’s not shocking to me is that the victim is black and was shot. Until all of these “activists” and politicians start to bring attention to and address the plague of gun violence in the black community, the bodies and victims will continue to pile up. Nobody wants to call out the black community, however, because that is regarded as being racist. Blacks won’t address it because you will be vilified as being an Uncle Tom if you do. No politicians will touch it because that won’t get you votes.
 
What’s not shocking to me is that the victim is black and was shot. Until all of these “activists” and politicians start to bring attention to and address the plague of gun violence in the black community, the bodies and victims will continue to pile up. Nobody wants to call out the black community, however, because that is regarded as being racist. Blacks won’t address it because you will be vilified as being an Uncle Tom if you do. No politicians will touch it because that won’t get you votes.
:rolleyes:
No matter how many times this BS is disproven, wingnuts will continue to parrot it.
 
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:rolleyes:
No matter how many times this BS is disproven, wingnuts will continue to parrot it.
Are you saying gun violence in the black community is not an issue? Have you looked at stats? What did I say that is disproven?
 
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:rolleyes:
No matter how many times this BS is disproven, wingnuts will continue to parrot it.
Explain how or why was this disproven? As awful of a statement as it is, there is a substantial amount of truth to it but it isn't "appropriate" to discuss. All one has to do is open any paper in any large city to see how many black youths are shot, killed or caught shooting another black youth, usually male. How do you "disprove" that?
 
So, how did this play out?

1) Big sis sent little sis to do her dirty work?

2) Little sis was doing her own dirty work?
 
Don't hold your breath, he only copy/pastes articles into threads and will occasionally give someone a one-liner before retreating back to the news sites.
Lol…. I am gathering that. I think a staggering stat is that in 2019, though Black men and boys ages 15 to 34 made up just 2% of the nation's population, they were among 37% of gun homicides. That is insane. Blacks In that age group are 20 x more likely to be shot and killed than their white counterparts. They aren’t being killed by white supremacists either. They are being killled by other blacks.
 
To be honest, they aren't likely to know anything that isn't parroted on fox news.
One doesn’t need to watch Fox News to be aware of the gun violence in the black community. Unless your head is in the sand or you are in complete denial, you would recognize this, also. This isn’t a “feeling” I am bringing up. It’s a fact.
 
Saw the story and the first thing I asked myself was if this person was black.

Turns out yes.

You would sure think statistically that she would have been white since CR is dang near 90% white.

Yet when you turn on the news, the majority of the hardest crimes are committed by are race that makes up less than 6% of the population.

BLM right?

White people can't help black people. The only people that can help black people are black people.
 
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