(WBBM NEWSRADIO) - Three years after a 25-year-old Illinois State University graduate student vanished and was later found dead, his family continues to search for answers.
In 2021, Jelani Day was a graduate student in Bloomington when he vanished.
His mother, Carmen Bolden Day, is tormented by her decision to urge him to study closer to home. She said she spoke with him the day before he went missing and that he was excited about the next day’s early alarm and being on campus.
Two days later, his car was discovered in Peru, an hour north of Bloomington, abandoned in a wooded area near a YMCA. His clothes were left inside. The license plates were missing. His phone and its location were turned off.
His body was eventually found in the Illinois River. An autopsy revealed missing eyes, teeth and mutilated genitals.
“You hear about the missing white woman syndrome, you hear about missing Black women, but, when it comes to Black males, it’s like that’s non-existent that it couldn’t happen to them,”Bolden Day said.
She organized her own search team after she said police told her they would investigate their search after the weekend.
“In between now and Monday, who’s going to be looking for Jelani?” She recalled. “He told me, ‘Carmen, where [are] we supposed to look?’ And, I said, ‘What do you mean?’”
Carmen found surveillance footage from the YMCA showing another car near where her son’s car was found, but she said police didn’t retrieve it for months.
“When they got back to try to retrieve the video footage, it had been taped over, and they lost the flash drive that I gave them.
Bolden Day wants the Justice Department to investigate the police’s handling of the case. She has also started a foundation to find answers for Jelani and support families of missing minorities.
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