PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Runners in Philadelphia and the rest of the country got an early start Friday morning. Around 4:30 a.m., a few dozen people met at the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps to run as a group in honor of Eliza Fletcher, the Memphis woman who was abducted and killed during an early-morning jog last week.
Fletcher, a 34-year-old kindergarten teacher and mother, never returned home from her 4 a.m. run on Sept. 2. Police said she was abducted near the University of Memphis by a man who pulled her into an SUV.
That man, 38-year-old Cleotha Abston, was arrested days later, and authorities found Fletcher’s body on the steps of a vacant house.
“It just hit me really hard when I saw the story,” said Bennett Brookstein, founder and president of the Fairmount Running Club.
He organized Friday’s 4-mile run in Philadelphia — an act of community he had experienced firsthand last year. On Christmas Day 2021, Brookstein was assaulted and stabbed while jogging on Martin Luther King Drive.
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“My friends supported me and [at the time] people were posting on Instagram ‘Run for Bennett.’ Now, I’m doing it for Eliza,” he said. “As soon as I saw they were running in Tennessee, I had to run as well.”
Since his attack, Brookstein no longer feels safe running alone. Others, like Mary Cate Coyle of Fairmount, are also rethinking their solo routines.
“We’re all just out here trying to live our lives, do something for the better, for ourselves, for fitness, and it’s not necessarily always gonna be safe, which is a shame,” she said.
“When I go for a run, I worry about my safety. My family worries about my safety,” said Nicole Bieri of Fairmount. “To find out that things are happening to women all over the world still — it’s just important we come together and act as a running community together.”
Organizers around the country caught wind of the #RunForLiza effort, a coordinated campaign to finish the run that Fletcher had started.
The Philly runners varied in level and pace, but this time, they all stayed together as one.
“We all have to come together just to see some behavior change,” said Katie Burns of the Philadelphia chapter of the fitness movement November Project, “and make sure that running is something that can be safe and accessible for all.”